Work Text:
Ensign Aisha Darwin hates bullshit.
The minute she turned eighteen, she got her shuttle pilot’s license, after which she promptly left Earth. A decade on rust buckets and garbage scows taught her how to swear like a grunt, punch better than most men she’s met, and navigate using equipment that breaks half the time.
When she applied to Starfleet Academy, she was a decade older than the other Cadets. Make no mistake, she's cut out to be a redshirt, but that’s not what she wants to be. She belongs on the bridge, doing what she does best. And for that, she needed an Academy degree, which is what she damn well earned.
Enterprise is the sleekest, the fastest – the best. Aisha doesn’t give a tribble’s asshole about the name-brand recognition that comes with serving on Starfleet’s flagship. But she wants to explore uncharted territory, and she earned this post with years of hard work and dirty experience.
That’s why she really doesn’t like James T. Kirk.
Kirk is a kid, a kid who got lucky and saved her planet, and she’s thankful as all hell but that doesn’t make him Captain material. He’s a figurehead, and he should be an impotent figurehead. Yet instead of being a desk jockey, Captain Kirk has the power to kill all the Enterprise crew with one immature, bull-headed decision.
He doesn’t know how to haggle with a Tellarite or negotiate with a mated quad of pissed-off Andorians.
And more importantly, he doesn’t know when to keep his nose out of other people’s business. If that volcano was going to erupt, he should have let it erupt instead of putting his first officer and the whole ship in danger.
How many times have they escaped through nothing better than sheer luck? Aisha knows not to live on luck, because if your luck runs out, you don’t want to be dead.
Kirk is barely more than a teenager, and he hasn’t figured that out yet.
So when Uhura comms Aisha to the bridge to relieve Pavel a full three hours before her shift, she knows some bullshit is about to go down.
She takes her post like she owns the place, because she’ll follow the chain of command, but fuck if she’ll be meek about it.
Aisha Darwin hates bullshit.
Because she likes to stay alive.