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Breathe in the Music. Breathe out the Dance.

The only sound that echoed was soft breath, whispering, singing, in and out. In and out. Repeating in a soft rhythm that soothed as much as it nourished.

Maple wood floors gave imperceptibly beneath graceful feet, a hint of sweet scent mingling with the vibrations of movements past and rising until darker memories were pushed aside. Replaced by memories of muscle and music.

The point of a foot, the curve of the back, a shift of the hips, the lift of an arm, the turn of a wrist: each position was waiting in her.

First. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth.

She had learned the Terran terms her first week. Learned when she had heard the strains of music and followed, moving swiftly towards this echo of home.

The glass walls had revealed the familiar in the alien:

A room of females, performers and audience.

The heavy strain of music, strong through the body and light through the mind.

A worship of the body, intensive, selfish, and willful.

They were all things she knew. Things she needed.

Terrans called it dance. Orions called it breath.

Gaila approved of both terms. Integrated them both, as she would soon do Terra. Mixed the names until they were each a part of her, claiming dance as surely as she had claimed Earth.

To dance. A verb: to enact a series of movements rhythmically attuned to a piece of music.

To breathe. A verb: to take air into the lungs and expel, as a regular physiological process.

One was will. One was necessity.

Her body needed breath, needed movement, and adjusted the movement to become rhythmically attuned to the world around her. She breathed differently on Terra than on Orion Prime.

But she breathed nonetheless.

***

All Orion females are taught the breath of life.

The matriarchal structure of Orion life ensures the privacy of this ritual. And though Gaila was born of a lower caste, it was still the Great Mother of the ruling family of her province that came for her and her sisters.

There were twelve sisters in Gaila’s year, twelve sisters born of twelve mothers and four fathers. Fathers they rarely saw. Orion men lived quite separately, kept confined to the spheres that were most appropriate for their physicality, as women were kept in the spheres that were theirs. Which, in the case of Orion females, were the public spheres.

Some of her sisters were born in the business caste. The most important of castes, trained from a young age to participate in and help run the Syndicate. They were taught only the strictest of breaths, the breath taught to all females in their first years. It instilled discipline and precision, the five positions and their endless variations teaching both structure and adaptation.

Other sisters were born in the professional castes, others in the service castes, but occasionally there was a girl born in the diplomatic castes, as Gaila was. Destined to be sent to other worlds as an ‘ambassador’ of Orion.

So it was inevitable that when Great Mother came for them, she watched Gaila carefully. Judged harshly.

Gaila began with her sisters. The daughters of Orcia.

They learned to breathe, to dance, for each other. Were taught by female bodies the movement of hips, guided by female hands into the positions of the legs, and judged by female eyes, corrected by female mouths. Breathing, dancing, was the arena of women.

And Gaila was born to breathe.

Soon, too soon, she was separated from her sisters. Taught new breaths, new dances, by new hands. And she fell in love with the hands, with the breaths, with the dance. Her skin became sensitive to each touch, each pleased or disappointed sigh, each thrum of music that rippled deep into her flesh and made her feel.

Was taught that the will of her mind controlled the will of her body. Learned to submit the breath of her body to her mind. Learned to submit.

With each dance taught, she was separated further and further from her sisters. At night, she would return to the house and hear her sisters whispering about numbers rather than nuances of flesh. Speaking a language of mathematics rather than of rhythm.

And she began to wonder if the breath of life did not extend to all of life. For their language of numbers was understood by Gaila. She could hear their rhythms in her head as her hips and feet danced, as her arms lured and her mouth teased. As she learned the languages of the nations she was to conquer, her mind connected the numbers inherent to language, to math, to music into an interconnected chain.

Breaths of the tongue, breaths of the fingers, breaths of the hips and feet, they all whispered the same rhythms to Gaila. And desiring to breathe more than please, she waited until they slept, and learned their dances as her own.

Learned and was content . . . until she came of age.

And then was taught that though her body was subject to her mind, it was subject to others as well. Her will over the movements of her body did not extend to possession.

And she was forced to submit her body to another’s desire. Her body became theirs. Other.

But not her mind.

Her mind was to remain. Remain Orion. Remain theirs. Other.

And though she submitted, she did not subsume. Instead she danced, she breathed, she chose. And planned.

For five years she planned. She danced. She breathed. She learned.

Trained to be an ‘ambassador’, Gaila amassed knowledge. She was taught the desires of other species, which males and females would lust for her, and those who would be of no use to her. She was taught the imbalances of power. Taught that desire was not power, but a weapon. Possession was power, and first her House and then the Syndicate owned Gaila.

Owned her body. Could force her submit. To seduce. To dance.

But not to breathe.

There was always a choice. And Gaila chose to live.

It was the first choice she had made. The first time since she’d learned of possession and power that she realized she could possess herself. Realized she could not separate her mind and body, could not submit one without losing the other.

So she determined to neither submit nor lose.

And three years later, she was the most promising ‘ambassador’ of her year. Her House was pleased by honor she would bring to them. She had been assigned to a pleasure house on Risa, a favorite world of Starfleet.

Of Captain Christopher Pike.

***

“I wish to seek asylum.”

The older man was sprawled out beneath her, flesh still twitching deep inside her, fingers still clutching the smooth skin of her buttocks.

He had orgasmed a mere twenty-seconds before her statement so she did not judge the confused glaze of his eyes, the surprised arch of his eyebrows, too harshly.

She watched with amused eyes as he struggled to pull himself out of the fog of her pheromones. Her scent was the loveliest of her House, both powerful and light. Playful. Enticing. Like Gaila herself. And she had far more control of them than he could imagine.

Control was power, after all. And Orion women did not relinquish power.

So Gaila stayed, her thighs bracketing his hips. Soft and alluring, determined and precise. Fingers writing in Orion Prime, Gaila wrote across his chest her name, the one she had given herself. In her House she was merely the ‘ambassador’, the seventh daughter of the House of Orcia. On Risa, she was Alanania – desire.

“Asylum.”

It wasn’t a question, but a clarification. Gaila nodded, watching knowingly as he tracked the red ringlet that curled around her nipple. “I wish to unbecome Orion.”

An arched brow, “But you are on Risa - a free world.”

The curve of lips, “Yet I remain Orion. I am Orion until I am mine. And I can only be mine in the Federation.”

A scowl was making his way across his forehead, tension stiffening the previously replete skin beneath her. Her hands moved to release the tension in his shoulders, dancing across his skin in a rhythm ingrained in her.

Strong hands caught hers. “You are not here willingly.” There was anger in his voice. Indignation.

“I am Orion,” she repeated.

The captain sat up, moving her back so she was perched directly in his lap. And yet he was not aroused. She let loose a new burst of pheromones.

Dark pupils of icy eyes widened, even as lids narrowed. “Stop that.”

Shrugging an elegant shoulder, Gaila complied but left her hands in his.

“Were you sold to this house?” he demanded.

“I am here, but am Orion.”

Icy eyes considered that for a moment. “So you still have Orion owners?”

And she smiled at his naïveté. At his ignorance. There was so much Orion knew of the Federation. Of Starfleet. Learned in their beds, in their arms, in their skin. Learned, amassed, collected and distributed to new generations of Orion ‘ambassadors’.

And there was so little they knew of Orion.

Gaila freed a hand to trace an eyebrow in genuine affection for this man who could not know, who had lived a life so different he could not conceive of Orion possession. Even as he was caught in it, in her.

“As an Orion, I remain Orion, no matter to which House I am sold. Money is exchanged but that is not my price. Nor my value.”

His head cocked just a bit, studying her more carefully. “And what is your value?”

She smiled. “My value is in my possession. I possess knowledge, Orion possesses me. My value is in what I know.”

“You know that I am a officer.”

“I know that you are the captain of the USS Exeter. I know that you are on the final shoreleave of a three-year mission. I know that you are set to return to Earth where they are constructing a new flagship. And I know that in four years, when it is complete, Starfleet will name you its captain.”

Strong hands were suddenly clenched around her wrists and Gaila found herself on her back, angry eyes looming over her and she laughed. Laughed when he shook her, “Who are you?”

“I am the seventh daughter of Orcia.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Gaila licked her lips even as she twined her legs around his hips, “Asylum. And I will teach Starfleet what it means.”

“You offer political knowledge.”

Even as he held himself above her, she could feel his interest. “I offer my value.”

His brows scowled again, “The Federation does not engage in slave trading. I cannot buy your freedom.”

He didn’t understand.

“I do not desire to be purchased.”

The captain frowned. “I can give you credits and you can buy your own freedom. Passage to a Federation planet.”

Gaila sighed. They had so much to learn.

“I do not desire credits.”

He considered her for a long moment. “I know some people on Risa. I can help hide you.”

At this Gaila smiled. He was a good man. If a slow one.

“I do not desire to be hidden.”

An exasperated sigh, “Then what the hell do you desire?”

Graceful fingers laced through the graying hair at his nape. And when he refused to bend, she bent upwards and brushed soft kisses against his unresponsive mouth, moved her hips against eagerly responsive flesh. “I desire a choice, Captain. I choose to leave Orion, and become a Federation member. I desire your acceptance of that choice.”

Gaila could see his mind run through the implications. It had never been done before. Political asylum granted to an Orion. Of course, none had ever asked.

When she had begun planning, she had heard of the ‘underground railroad’ for Orion women to escape. But she did not want to run. She wanted to dance. She wanted to breathe. She wanted to choose. As each movement in a dance was a choice, as each breath was a choice, so too would her new life be.

So she had waited. Waited for this man who was known for his sense of honor. Waited not to be rescued, but to be accepted.

“The Federation would expect quite a lot from you in exchange for the political shitstorm that would erupt.”

Of that, Gaila had no doubt. Orion would not be pleased.

“I have significant value. To Orion and therefore the Federation.”

“Knowledge.”

“And the ability to obtain it.”

Christopher Pike rubbed a hand ruefully over his face. “You wouldn’t be able to obtain it in this method.”

Gaila only smiled and gently rolled her eyes. Moving just a bit, she swept an arm over the side of the bed and pulled a PADD out from underneath it. Activating the screen and bringing up the files she had hacked into a few hours ago, she turned it to the man. “Your personal communications from aboard the Exeter. I obtained access to the files eight point six minutes after the first beam down to Risa commenced.”

The PADD was snatched out of her hands and those shards of anger were back. Before he could speak, Gaila was running a soothing hand down his side, “Only to illustrate my value, of course.”

She could see the weight this new factor carried. “Are you sure about this? You’ll never be able to return to Orion.”

There was some weight in that. She would miss the smell, the fragrance on the air. She would miss the thrum of instruments, the dances that were only performed on Orion, the festivals and rites she had led as the dancer of the Orcia House. But she was an ‘ambassador’. She wouldn’t have been allowed home either way. A new dancer was being taught.

“There is nothing for which to return.”

“No family?” The captain asked roughly, compassionately.

Gaila ran a limber foot up his calf, “They are not mine. They are-”

“-Orion,” Pike finished, obviously exasperated.

She only nodded. In time he would begin to understand.

With a sigh, Christopher began to detangle her legs. He shot her a cool look, “You could have asked for this before. This,” gesturing to the bed and her naked form, “was not necessary.”

Rising smoothly to her knees, Gaila stopped his movement with a hand running down his flank. She quite enjoyed the texture of his flesh. The coarseness of his body hair, the strands of silver gleaming against pale skin. “If we had spoken first, I would not have gotten this.”

Amusement twisted his lips. “A prize, am I? Because I’m a captain?”

A soft shake of her head sent ringlets bouncing, “Because you are a choice. Which you would not have believed afterwards.”

He frowned, “It’s not a choice when you are sold to a pleasure house and forced to dance for men.”

Gaila nearly laughed at his anger. For yet, here he was. In a pleasure house.

Instead, she twined her arms around his, “You can protest how I came to be, or you can enjoy the results. Choose, Captain, as I have.”

And really, with the taste of her on his lips and silky skin pressed against his, pheromones beginning to once more waft in the air, just enough to tease, there was only choice worth making.

***

The Academy was just where Gaila wanted to be. There were innumerable things to learn and endless choices to make and she thrilled in them all.

Boy or girl.

Andorian or Betazoid.

Engineering or Computer Science.

Milk or fruit juice.

Choices came in infinite diversity and infinite combinations. Professor Spock had spoken of the Vulcan way and Galia was pleased to adopt the Vulcan way as her own. And if she kept some things of Orion, then that was her choice to make now.

So she danced. She danced with her new sisters in clubs. Rediscovered the joy of her childhood, dancing among women and for herself. And if it drew pleasing partners to her, well, it was her choice to sample wasn’t it?

It was one of those nights, at the beginning of her second year in Starfleet, that she saw those eyes on her. Her hand clasped in Nyota’s, Galia had been teaching her a roll of the abdomen and hips, when she felt that gaze and the hint of something different in the air.

And looking up, found intent blue eyes on hers. Eyes bluer than her own, than Christopher’s, the blue of an Orion flower she would never see again. A flower her mother used to tuck into her hair. She felt a longing for home that she accepted, before pushing it gently away.

Gently patting Nyota’s hip, she disengaged her hand and began making her way across the bar, hearing Nyota trailing after her while muttering under her breath. When she stopped in front of the human, Nyota rolled her eyes and spoke before Gaila could. “You.”

A brief, cocky smile winked in Nyota’s direction before those eyes met hers again. “Dance?”

Gaila nodded, a sunny smile breaking out across her face. Yes, she wished to dance with this human.

And leaving Nyota with his handsome, scowling friend, Gaila put her hands in calloused, pink palms and went to learn a new dance.

***

Gaila loved James T. Kirk. Had known she would when he had moved so easily, confidently with her. Knew she would when his hands touched but didn’t grasp, when his hips moved with hers and didn’t push.

Knew when his thumb ran over the small brand at the small of her back, tissue bunched and a declaration of the House of Orcia, and something empathic had flashed in those eyes before he brushed the gentlest of kisses against her cheek. He hadn’t asked her back to his place, hadn’t sought an invitation of his own.

He had finished the dance, escorted her back to a frowning Nyota, and clapped the shoulder of his friend and disappeared.

And Gaila’s heart had loved.

Which wasn’t to say that in the course of the next few years, James Kirk didn’t incense Gaila on occasion. He was a stubborn human who had more complexes than Gaila could count. He did not accept as she did, did not bend in order to survive.

His way was different, harder, and often left him bloodied.

But he was her friend and Gaila had few friends. Too many didn’t understand that a part of her would always be Orion – but that most of her wasn’t. Instead, she had many pleasant acquaintances but few friends. Nyota, Leonard, and Jim. And Christopher. When he allowed her to be.

And so when she was floating in space, when the wreckage of her many pleasant acquaintances and a planet that had given Gaila her way lay around her, she waited. Because for as surely as she loved, she knew she was loved. Truly loved as she had never been. They would come for her.

It made the rest easier to bear.

For she was the only female in an escape pod of four.

And not all survivors would be honorable.

Later they would say that she didn’t have her pheromone suppressants. That the other cadets, already traumatized by the battle with Nero, simply could not withstand the onslaught of her pheromone production.

It wouldn’t be called rape.

It was Nyota who had first explained rape to her. Her first year when a large Terran male had trapped her against the wall in the alley and Nyota had found her, kicking the male in the testicles and calling law officers. Gaila had had to give a statement. Attempted rape. It had to be defined for her before she could say that was what had happened.

A lack of choice.

So they wouldn’t call what happened to her for three days before the Enterprise found her rape. Starfleet, that is.

But now Gaila knew better. She had not chosen. Had been held down. Had bruises on her shoulders, her wrists, her ankles and thighs and hips.

Green flesh had been ripped apart, marks of nails and teeth splitting silky skin until she bled. Blood added to the burns garnered in the few moments they had battled Nero, when she had pushed one of the men on top of her into the escape pod and felt the sparks of the ship breaking apart, searing into her. Burns that were pushed down into the floor of the pod until they bled anew.

They had wanted her to dance underneath them. Cursed and taunted, spoken words meant to convey sexual permissiveness, as if to grant themselves that permission.

But Gaila would not dance. She would submit, but she would not be subsumed.

She would not dance. But she would breathe.

For three days.

Until she opened her eyes to find the blue of an Orion gaila flower looking at her, anguished but so familiar. Until she felt trembling fingers trace her cheek and the gentlest of kisses pressed there.

And a smile touched her lips.

***

They didn’t call it rape. It was an ‘unfortunate consequence of regrettable circumstances’.

They chose to forget what she had taught them her first year on Earth – when she had submitted to tests and had her pheromones extensively studied. And they had learned that Orion females did not emit pheromones when injured.

Leonard had sworn, and Nyota had curled her hand around hers as Jim read the official report that had been sent to him.

Starfleet had chosen to overrule his and Leonard’s testimony.

They had pulled her out of the escape pod. Had pulled the others off of her.

Jim’s gaze met hers. There was no sympathy in them, for which she was grateful. She was Orion – she had withstood more than this.

As had Jim. “What do you want to do? Do you want to appeal? Cause you have that right.”

Nyota shot Jim a glare but rubbed a thumb over her naked palm, “You don’t have to make any decisions now, Gaila. Just rest.”

Leonard cursed. “Christ, Jim! She’s been brutalized. How the hell is she supposed to decide what she wants to do?”

But Gaila kept her eyes on Jim’s. Wet her lips, took a breath, and made a choice.

***

Gaila was not present when Jim officially received his commission. She regretted that. But she had made her choice.

A choice that had led her to sitting in a small box answering the questions her lawyer, Areel Shaw, asked her. Describing, again, Orion pheromone production. Explaining why she could not have been producing pheromones during those three days.

Testifying, they called it.

Jim and Leonard had testified the day before. She was the last to be called. The last to speak.

“Ms. Orcia, is it then fair to say that the events that occurred during three days spent in that escape pod cannot reasonably be attributed to your biological pheromone production?”

“That is correct.”

“And it was not consensual?”

“It was not.”

And felt a shudder run through her. Ghosts running over the skin that hadn’t felt like hers since those three days.

“So you were held down against your will, already weakened by saving Mr. Davis’s life, only to have he and two others rape you repeatedly for three days, until you were near death yourself?”

Gaila took a deep breath. Felt the air fill her lungs, travel through each part of her. Closed her eyes for a moment, remembered the clasp of Jim’s hand in hers as he told her he’d already requested her aboard the Enterprise, remembered that this was her choice. In this moment, this was her choice, and expelled her breath, “Yes, I was raped for three days by Cadet David, Cadet Johnson, and Cadet Banravian.”

***

When the verdict came back three hours later, Leonard, Jim and Nyota had slipped in.

Gaila nearly smiled to see Jim’s hand tucked into Leonard’s. Finally. Both of their pheromone productions around each other could rival hers. It had been a long three years of denial.

Looked like they had made their own choice.

And when the verdict was read, she let out a deep breath and felt clean for the first time in weeks.

***

So here she stood. Maple beneath her feet. Clean air in her lungs. Waiting for the song to come to her.

At first she hadn’t danced because Leonard had asked her not to. Had asked her to give her body more time to heal. And Gaila, seeing the strain on her friend, had agreed.

Then she hadn’t because she could no longer hear the music. The numbers and rhythms that always sang to her had been replaced by harsh words, ugly, vicious sounds, commands to dance. Each movement felt like a betrayal, an imposition on a body no longer hers. A body that had been claimed forcibly by others.

Rape.

A small word.

An ugly word.

A word that could only exist in the languages of the Federation.

There was no word for ‘choice’ in Orion. No word for ‘rape’.

So she stood. Barefoot. Clothed only in a slip of a dress similar to what she wore as a child. Stood as the seventh daughter of the House of Orcia and waited to be Gaila once more.

The first strand of music took her by surprise.

Jim had pressed the data chip into her hand earlier and told her he would be waiting just outside. She had assumed it was some of his music. All of her things had been packed and sent aboard the Enterprise. They would leave tomorrow.

But it wasn’t his music.

It was hers.

Orion’s.

For her birthday, the day chosen by Gaila her first year on Earth, just three months before Nero, Jim had taken her to a symphony. It was a Federation orchestra but they were exploring the music of Orion. It had Orion’s ritualistic rhythms, the counts and positions of five. Gaila could feel them strum through her body. Could feel the urge to arch her feet, shift her hips, lift her arms. Felt the call of Orion Prime in each beat.

And had struggled to breathe.

Until string instruments had come in.

Orion did not use string instruments. All music in Orion was made with breath and body.

But this, this was hybrid. And the dance of fingers made it somehow . . . . freer. Lighter. Joyful.

And Gaila breathed once more.

As she did now, recalling those strands. And felt her palms turn up, chose to raise her arms, rolled first one hip, moved one foot into pointe, took one step.

Closing her eyes, she stood for a long moment. But no longer without song.

The rhythms and numbers sang to once more until her breathing adjusted to their rhythm. Then her body. Her head, her lips, her neck, her arms, her fingers, her back, her chest, her abdomen, her hips, her legs, her feet, her toes – all were hers once more.

She listened. She breathed. She danced.

She submitted to the music. Subsumed herself in it.

And when the last string was stroked, when her arms fell and her feet stilled, she opened her eyes and found herself, perfectly reflected once more.

***

Soon she would learn to dance among the stars. To breathe among them.

Gaila knew the new life she had chosen would be different.

But as she felt herself beamed onto the Enterprise, as she opened her eyes and met the smiling eyes of an Orion flower, she laughed.

She would breathe and dance differently. But she would do so nonetheless.

fic: Breathe in the Music. Breathe out the Dance.