Their first meeting was inauspicious.

The mechanism by which Starfleet Academy assigns cadets various courses, while normally organized and efficient, like any system that is reliant on the actions of sentient beings, occasionally experiences irregularities.

Just such an occasion arose when a distinguished visiting scholar who had agreed to teach (among other things) an elective seminar fell victim to Bendii Syndrome and could not fulfill his commitments. The advanced communications cadets — all tracking in languages or linguistics or both — were duly reassigned to the alternate course of their choice. But the lone fourth class cadet had no alternate choice, and so was not as fortunate.

.

.

Upon his return to Earth after a successful mission serving under Captain Christopher Pike, a series of conflicting circumstances left Lieutenant Spock in a quandary. The captain wanted the young half-Vulcan to lead his science department. Starfleet brass wanted the captain in command of their new flagship. The Enterprise was still four years away from completion. Exploratory runs typically lasted five years. Accepting another mission was out of the question.

It was Pike — Spock's mentor and his father figure since his earliest days at the Academy — who persuaded him to take on a temporary (if four years could be called "temporary") role as an instructor in order to avoid another long-term deep-space assignment while they awaited the completion of their new ship.

And while the lieutenant had never so much as tutored anyone before, the first meeting of his first Accelerated Elementary Vulcan class started well.

The students, though predominantly cadets fourth class, were attentive and respectful. Twenty-four appendages held twenty-four styli above twenty-four PADDs as twenty-four sentient beings embarked on their first university-level study of Spock's first language. He knew, because he had spent days carefully scrutinizing the records of the cadets in all of his classes, and because some prior knowledge of the language was required for this course in particular, that most had learned basic Federation Vulcan in secondary school or through other, non-academic means.

The twenty-fifth cadet, however, was something of an enigma. A late addition, Nyota Uhura did not have a complete entry in the student database. He had no way of discerning if she understood his lecture, or for that matter, whether or not she could possibly possess a level of maturity — she appeared to be quite a young human — a course such as this required.

He could see, however, that she was not taking notes. As far as he could tell, she was not even paying attention to the lecture. She would have to be dealt with. Soon.

.

.

Cadet Nyota Uhura forced herself not to shift impatiently in her seat. She'd already wasted three minutes deciding there was absolutely nothing interesting about Lieutenant S'chn T'gai Spock. His pointed ears and slashed eyebrows were as Vulcan as they came. His unstudied impassivity didn't even begin to hint at his human ancestry. Not that she'd ever believed those rumors, anyway.

He might be handsome in that famous Greco-Roman statue kind of way — her sister, Upenda, no doubt, would be drooling all over his perfectly-formed body by now — but Nyota hadn't enlisted in Starfleet for the eye candy. She was here because years of wallowing at the bottom had left her with a drive to be the best at anything she tried. And being both a Wakufunzi and an Uhura meant she wasn't satisfied with only trying the easy stuff.

As soon as she'd learned of Doctor Tevek's illness, and her subsequent reassignment, she had made an appointment to see her student advisor.

Commander Barnes was (not exactly coincidentally) an old schoolmate of M'Umbha Uhura bint Wakufunzi's. She had been suitably sympathetic to her friend's daughter's plight , but completely useless nonetheless.

"I'm afraid I can't help you, Nyota," the Andorian woman informed her. "If only you hadn't left it so late…"

"But I only just found out!" the girl protested with all the indignation a fifteen-year-old Terran could muster. "If the Academy had allowed me to choose an alternate—"

Commander Barnes twitched her antennae sadly.

"I am sorry about that. We don't often accept underage cadets and they almost never come in after having been wait-listed… If you'd been accepted during regular admission, well now, then we might have had time to fix this mess. As things stand, you'll have to apply to your instructor for a recommendation to transfer. It's a silly rule — and a waste of time — don't I know it! But that's just the way things sometimes are in a bureaucracy."

Uhura silently fumed against the ridiculousness of the system, but hadn't taken her annoyance out on her friendly advisor. If it hadn't been for the Andorian and her human husband, she likely wouldn't even be at Starfleet Academy.

"Just ask Lieutenant Spock for an evaluation after the first day of class," the advisor advised. "I don't foresee a problem at all."

Without any choice but to follow that advice, Uhura had arrived early and taken a seat right out in front. She wasn't taking a chance on getting stuck in a class she didn't need for the rest of the semester.

She killed another six minutes figuring out his class really was a waste of her valuable time. And, as Lieutenant Spock droned on about Vulcan grammar and syntax — things she'd learned ages ago! — the cadet let her mind drift back to less frustrating times and forward to what was sure to be an exciting future.

.

.

"Cadet Uhura," he called out in Federation Vulcan as soon as the others began working on the first lesson. She stood, and he continued with, "You are not endeavoring to complete the assignment and I saw that you did not take notes during the lecture."

She looked at him, but said nothing. Perhaps she did not understand?

"Cadet Uhura," he repeated, this time in Standard English. "I said, 'You are—'"

"I understood what you said, Savensu," she interrupted him, using carefully toneless — and flawlessly accented — Federation Vulcan. "I was unaware that you were posing a query."

Several heads around the room snapped up to stare at the cadet, but a quick look from their instructor sent them back to their PADDs.

From most humans, Spock would have suspected arrogance in such a response. He was not certain this was the case with the cadet. Her facility for his language, in spite of her apparent youth, suggested she had spent significant time among his people — most likely while on his planet.

He recalled that his mother had once spoken of an Ambassador Uhura who had served on Vulcan for a number of years. At the time he had not truly paid attention and certainly had not asked any questions about the ambassador; now he wondered if this cadet could be the woman's child. Unless and until he learned otherwise, treating her as if she were a Vulcan-trained student was a reasonable tactic.

"My apologies, Cadet," he said, slipping back into his native tongue. "I wished to know why were you not taking notes as your classmates were doing. Vulcan is not a simple language for humans to acquire later in life and only the most diligent candidates are accepted into the Academy's Advanced Vulcan Program as cadets fourth class."

She tilted her head slightly, as if considering his words. This time, Spock did not doubt that she had understood him, so she could only be, he surmised, assessing the logic of his question and statement. That small movement was confirmation enough of where she had received at least part of her education.

"However," he went on, "as you have adequately demonstrated the reason for your neglect and inattention, I will pose another query. Why are you enrolled in this course?"

"I believe I was mistakenly assigned to this course, sir."

That much was obvious. Lieutenant Spock reminded himself that she was almost certainly accustomed to Vulcan instructors and she wasn't trying to exasperate him.

"When you saw Accelerated Elementary Vulcan on your schedule, did it occur to you to approach your advisor to correct the error?"

"Yes, sir," she said, still in that inexplicably irritating monotone. "Commander Barnes said that I would have to apply directly to you for a transfer."

Spock considered that for a moment, silently railing against bureaucratic inefficiency…

"Cadet," he said abruptly, as a new idea occurred to him. "Where were you educated?"

"I lived on Vulcan until I was nine Terran years old," she replied in what he first thought was the more nuanced Vuhlkansu yeht — literally "correct Vulcan"— his planet's standard language, based on a dialect native to the region surrounding Shi'Kahr. Until she continued and he realized she was speaking the dialect, itself. "All of my official schooling, until that time, was conducted in the schools there. At my mother's insistence, I also received tutoring."

"Which school did you attend?" he asked in the same tongue, impressed that she appeared to have discerned his city of origin from his speech alone. Few Vulcans could do so; the talent was thought to be unheard of in offworlders.

He noticed red flush blooming beneath the brown of her cheeks, and, suddenly suspected he knew the reason for her deviation from Federation Vulcan. None of the other cadets were likely to fully comprehend the language they were using. He wondered if he should have left the question unasked.

"I attended Primary School Number Thirteen until I was six and then transferred into School Number Seven."

Spock quelled the flood of fellow-feeling that threatened to overtake him. For whatever reason, this cadet's parents had enrolled her in Shi'Kahr's largest institution for learning challenged Vulcans rather than send her to the school designated for the children of alien diplomats.

Reverting to Federation Vulcan, he commanded, "Meet me tomorrow during my office hours, Cadet Uhura. You will find them on a document attached to your syllabus."

.

.

"He's V'tosh Ka'tur," she complained to her brother that night. He was sure to be more understanding than their elder sister, she figured.

Upenda was medical student in fact and a scientist at heart. No one in the family knew where she'd gotten the poster-sized holo of Spock, son of Sarek, that she displayed on her dormitory wall, but its existence didn't bode well for Upenda having a sympathetic ear.

Muta, on the other hand, studied languages at the Universal Language Institute in Mombasa. The ten-hour time difference meant he should have been getting ready for his school day as she prepared for bed. Instead, he was playing one of the many instruments he'd crammed into his dormitory.

"No, he's not." He continued strumming his lute as if his baby sister's world wasn't falling apart.

"He mocked me in front of the entire class, kaka," she insisted. "He made me admit to going to Thirteen."

"And I'm sure you told him you were moved up to Seven less than three years later."

Nyota stared mutinously at the comm screen. "That is not the point," she said because she didn't have a point of her own.

"Oh? Then what is, Baby Star?" He launched into a song she didn't recognize. No doubt something he'd learned while goofing off instead of attending study groups.

For want of any better argument, she seized on that. "The Academy expects its cadets to take their education seriously. You're not here. You don't understand."

Muta grinned mischievously and played the opening notes of a piece every Uhura was required to learn. "I understand that you are being illogical, dada," he told her. "You could always give up and enroll at the DAV. There are no irrational Vulcans there."

He was right about the Diplomatische Akademie der Vereinigte Föderation der Planeten, located in Vienna. Vulcan diplomats were educated on their homeworld. But that didn't mean that attending the DAV would be smooth sailing.

All three Uhura children had left Vulcan when their mother had been temporarily reassigned to Andoria. Much to the family's surprise, the Andorians weren't nearly as accommodating as the Vulcans had been. Nyota had been forced to attend the planet's only school for offworlders. She had not been well-liked there.

Some of her former classmates intended to follow their parents into the Diplomatic Corps. Some of them were even intelligent enough to get accepted at the DAV.

The Akademie was far too small for "the little cold-blooded Uhura who thinks she better than us, or worse, that she's a Vulcan" not to expect to encounter former adversaries.

There'd be plenty of Wakufunzi cousins — relatives on her mother's side — there, too, but the truth was, she didn't want to join the Dip. Corps. She wanted to be out among the stars she was named for.

She still hadn't formulated an appropriate rejoinder when her brother broke into her thoughts, claiming he had would be late for class if he didn't hurry.

"It's not likely that you'll be stuck in his class for long, dada. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt until you're free of him," he said before they ended the communication. "If not for your own peace of mind, do it to make Penda jealous!"

Cadet Uhura had no intention of telling their sister about the ignominious encounter with her idol, but Muta's final words sent her to sleep with much lighter heart, anyway.

Reference: The chorus for Easier Said Than Done, by Morcheeba.

A/N: Videos for and the pertinent lyrics of all the songs illustrating this fic can be found at my livejournal in their respective chapters.

EDIT: If you read the original version of this, you'll know these chapters used to be accompanied by the relevant lyirics. Those version still live at lj, but won't return here.

Disclaimer: I don't own any Star Trek characters or concepts or any material produced by Morcheeba. I do not profit from writing or referencing.