Angry Words

Posted on Mon Mar 11th, 2019 @ 12:41pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Lieutenant Asa Dael

Mission: Gaia Reborn
Timeline: 2396

For the first time in their Starfleet career, Doctor Asa Dael was positively furious at another crew member. To make matters worse, it was their best friend, Lieutenant Mnhei’sahe Dox. During a staff meeting to plan for an encounter with an angry goddess, Dox had agreed to serve as a psionic conduit to Gaia, a creature that could kill her with a thought through a mental connection. Mnhei’sahe had her reasons, not the least of which being the plan had the highest probability of allowing the Hera to resolve the situation diplomatically, but Asa was not having it.

Following Mnhei’sahe to her quarters, Dael barged in without invitation, saying in angry tones, “What the hell was that? Do you want to die? I swear, Mnhei’sahe, I am this close to considering you suicidal and submitting you for a full psych review,” Asa was holding their thumb and first fingers infinitesimally apart, showing the limits to which their patience was being pushed.

Pacing angrily through the room, Dael glared at their friend, waiting on her response.

Across the room, standing near the windows, Dox's jaw was on the proverbial floor. She was still reeling from the conference herself and didn't expect what was now happening in the slightest. Asa was not happy about the plan during the meeting, but Dox didn't expect to see this level of anger and it hit her like a gut punch. "Asa... I... I don't..."

The anxious young Romulan stuttered trying to process what was happening. In shock, she shot back. "No! No, I don't want to die!! And I sure as hell don't want to be Clemens' god-damned 'gun'! I... I don't want ANY of this! But what am I supposed to do?!"


Throwing their hands up in the air, Asa said loudly, “You bloody well say no! You tell him to think of a better plan! You don’t agree to let a bloody Titan use you as a link! You think about the people who care about you, who will be destroyed if anything happens to you AND YOU DAMN WELL SAY NO!”

Asa’s hands were trembling now. They had never been this angry at someone they loved before outside of family. Part of Asa knew they were being unfair, but the thought of losing Mnhei’sahe was so distressing, and to watch her agree to the fool plan in the meeting had been too much.

“Did you even stop to think about what would happen to me if this psionic link that you are capable of kills you? I mean, it’s my fault you have the thing, I should never have signed off on you using that helmet, and I’ve watched you suffer for it. And now this? You want to invite in an angry, world destroying monster for a chat. Gods, Min! What about Mona? What do you think this will do to her? Do you even plan on telling her? Help me out here, what part of this is a good plan?”

"THE PART WHERE I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!!" Dox screamed back, trembling where she stood, her eyes shining with tears she was holding in place with every ounce of strength. "A Seven Mile high sign, Asa. That's what Nanna called it. Hera said the same basic thing. I won't be able to keep her out once we get there."

Looking down at herself as she spoke, Dox was literally shaking. "I can't stop her, Asa. When I was training with Sonak, he had to PHYSICALLY break contact at first because her started getting pulled in!" The portly red-head was on the verge of hysterics. "Once we get close, I've already LOST. I'm... I'm hers."

"The ONLY thing I can do is try and control HOW it happens! Thinking about you, and Rita and Mona are the ONLY things keeping me from hopping on that damn pirate ship and warping in the other direction out of fear! Holding on to the idea that you all might be the ONLY things that can get me.through this!"

"I have no IDEA how I'm going to tell Mona this. You think feel guilty for okaying the helmet? She built it! But I'm the idiot that insisted on wearing it so I could try and be super pilot! This is MY fault, ASA! Not yours and not Mona's! Because I wanted to be more important! Well, I got what I wanted, didn't!?"

Refusing to accept the pardon from responsibility, Asa sat down heavily on a nearby chair and buried their head in their hands, whispering softly, “Gods, what have I done?”

After a few shuddering breaths, they looked up at Mnhei’sahe, eyes glistening with unshed tears and said in a small, cracking voice, “None of this was supposed to happen. I failed you, Min. I’m so sorry. Gods, let me get you out of here. Nanna will let you stay with her until we can find a way to fix this. I’m sure she won’t mind if Mona comes too. Please, please let me fix this. You don’t have to do this…we can find another way. I can’t lose you, I refuse to.”

Sitting down on the floor in front of Asa, tears were now streaming down Dox's cheeks as she put her hands on her best friends knees. "I... I wanna run so bad, Asa. I really do. I'm terrified. But... but I'm more scared of what happens if I run. What... what happens to you all here? Gaia is a god to the gods. There's no other way to stop her. She'll destroy the ship. You, Rita, Enalia. Enalia's home. Billions."

"But when that piece of her was in me... Asa... I only felt compassion. Gratitude. If that's in there... if I... If WE can reach that, don't we have to try? How... how can I live with myself if I don't try?"


Clasping the offered hands tightly, Asa cried, “Don’t you see? You get to live with yourself, and everyone else gets to live with you too! I…I just don’t understand. If you felt compassion and gratitude, then why is she still going to kill us all? And if she is going to kill us all, how does knowing her toenail regrets it help us? This is all too much, it’s too big. No one person can face this, even with help from the rest of us! You said it yourself….a god to the gods, and we have the arrogance to think we can beam happy thoughts at her and she will just stop? There just…has to be another answer.”

After an awkward moment of crying, Asa concluded piteously, “I miss still being an atheist.”

"And I miss not believing in anything. But I do, and I can't not anymore. I believe in us, Asa. I HAVE to, because I don't want to be that person who didn't believe in anyone ever again."

Then Dox's tone got more somber. "We both know running away isn't it a solution. We're both of us here, not because we ran from our homes. We're here because we ran towards something better. And I believe we can still do that. Rita yelled at ODIN and got him to listen. Me and you, we made DEATH almost ugly cry by making her happy. The Captain collapsed an entire reality onto itself to save Rita and Sonak. And, I KNOW we can do this. Not me, but all of us together. Because we have to. Because trying is who we are. Because knowing something is impossible then doing it anyway is what we do." Dox put her hand on her friends cheek and raised it up to meet her eyes.

"Asa, I need your help. Because If I have you and Rita and Sonak and Enalia and Mona, then I'll believe I can survive this."

Through a barked laugh with no sense of mirth, Asa said, “It’s not like I’m going to leave you alone to it, am I? I would say I’m afraid I’m going to see you back on my operating table dying, but that’s not even it. I’m terrified I’m not even going to get that much. That Gaia will just end you. That there won’t be anything left to save. Or that the person who comes back isn’t the same one that goes out there. I swear, if my people had been less useless none of this would have needed to happen. But now there’s just Nanna, Guinan, one or two others, and me with any kind of ability to do anything, and I’m too clueless to be any help. This is what my people are supposed to be good at, but because it’s going to take me a thousand years to read a damn book, I’m useless. All I can do is just watch you take on all the risk and hope I can put you back together at the end.

Slumping further down, Asa continued, “I hope you are right, Min. I really do, because it’s going to destroy all of us if anything happens to you.”

With her hands still clasped tight by the lanky doctor, Dox did everything she could to show as much strength as she could muster, although Asa's worlds were a frightening reminder that her friend would live for another nineteen thousand years, leaving any memory of a Romulan girl named Mnhei'sahe behind like a whisper on the wind before too long. But she pushed those thoughts out of her mind as she shut her eyes tight.

For a long moment, there was silence in the room before Dox looked up again and spoke. With a smile, she tilted her head. "I'll be okay, Asa. We all will. As long as we have each other and go into this knowing that... It will happen. We'll show her who we are."

After going to the replicator to get a handful of tissues, Asa returned to where the two friends were sitting, handing some over to Mnhei’sahe.

”I’m sorry I yelled,” they said meekly.

Wiping her face with the tissues, Dox leaned forward, putting her hand back on Asa's. "I'm sorry I'm giving you a reason to. I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But you're far from useless and I'm not just talking about being the best doctor in the fleet. You helped Clemens come back when he was about to die. You connected with the Titan on Starbase 336. And remember. We're already connected. Nanna gave us that. Us and Rita, remember? So we have that."

Leaning over to rest their head on Mnhei’sahe’s shoulder, Asa snuffled, “I know. It’s just….you’re all so breakable. I’d feel better about things if everyone had Malana’s resilience. Although then I guess I’d be a mason and not a doctor, so, who knows. I wonder if the Captain will let me put the entire crew in Maco armor every time they leave their quarters. Probably not, huh?”

It was a small attempt at humor, but the best Asa had in that moment. Plus the mental image of watching a ships worth of crew clomping around in armor was oddly humorous to the doctor. It would certainly cut down on accidental burns and scraped though….

"Probably not, no." Dox chuckled lightly. "But what can we do? I made a recommendation to Commander Paris that you could figure out a way to monitor my brain waves at all times so that if Gaia decides to slip in, she wouldn't be able to use me against the ship. Something that would notify the computer if my brain wave patterns changed to shut out my access. Could we do that? Preferably without having to wear something silly on my head all the time?"

“Well, part of the fun is making you wear something silly on your head, but yeah, I can come up with something. How do you feel about tricorder necklace? Or something that we pin to your uniform? We just need a gee-gaw to put somewhere on your person, preferably head adjacent, that will scan within a specified range and report back into computer-monitored access. If we set up your access to be revoked automatically without a passing scan every 30 seconds, does that sound safe? Honestly, with Gaia I would rather err on the side of caution and shut out without passing a scan instead of being passive and waiting for you to fail one, you know?”

"You're the Doctor. Whatever you think is best, here. I just want to make sure an angry goddess doesn't have me fly us into a star. Dox replied, only half joking. "Any other ideas? Nural inhibitors? Something to keep her from making me breakout on interpretive ceremonial Ferengi dances?"

Snorting a quick laugh, Asa replied, “Sedative. Honestly, neural inhibitors are great, but they aren’t 100% in situations like this. If she starts taking the wheel, honestly Min, I’m putting you to sleep, dragging you to Sickbay, then putting on inhibitors and only waking you up once we are far enough away from Gaia. Possibly on the other side of the quadrant if we can manage it. Although I imagine Mona wouldn't turn away those dances...."

"No. No, she wouldn't." Dox laughed. "But you've gotta keep me conscious, Asa. We need to be able to talk to her. Show her there's a better way. So, we will need options."

“If she is overriding your consciousness, would that not indicate that the time for talking is done? And if we use a dampner on you, she won’t be able to communicate anyway, plus it will cause serious feelings of loneliness, despair, hopelessness….the Fleet still doesn’t have those things perfected for secondary telepaths, you know? Min, you fight your own head so hard anyway….are you willing to risk those feelings for months after?”

"Asa..." Dox's tone turned darker. "You know me as well as almost anyone. You know there's not much that scares me as much as... something in my head. About not having control of myself. I'm... I'm absolutely terrified, here. I am." The anxious young Romulan woman wiped away an errant tear.

"But using me might be her only way to communicate directly, we don't know. There's weird precedent for that kind of a thing happening. So we can't know her intention until it happens. For all we know, she thinks she's doing something great." Dox squeezed Asa's hands tighter.

"But... Seven Mile high sign." Dox gestured with her eyes up to her own brain. "She's coming. I can't stop it. And I can't run away, either. So I have to try and be as ready as possible. And I need help to do that. And if I survive this, I'll need help when it's over."

With a deep sigh, Asa replied, “I know, I know. I’ll do what I can, you know that…the portable dampeners that were fashioned are the latest tech, and they are about 25 years old, but I’ll see what I can do. Be forewarned, they hurt. A lot. Captain Kirk screaming in pain a lot.”

Tilting her head down to meet Asa's eyes, Dox smiled. "Asa... there's something else I need. I know you'll be there for me when I get lost. But... I need to know how to find you. And I think I know a way to do that."

Cocking one eyebrow and with a ghost of a smile passing across their lips, Asa replied, “How? By breaking your nose again? Because we gotta find a better way to page me than that, Min.”

"Hey, it works, doesn't it?" The nervous Romulan chuckled. "But, no. Seriously. There's... when I started meditation with Sonak, I started with the brazier... focusing on the flame on it to the exclusion of everything else. Then, after a while, when I needed to center myself on missions, I would try and picture that flame in my mind. To help me not panic."

She schooched up slightly more upright as she spoke. "But it wasn't a flame anymore. It was... It was just a light. A pulsing red light in my minds eye. I didn't know what.it meant until Mona told me. That light... It's me. It's what I am. Then... I was able to find hers and... and it was this beautiful blue. And during my exercises with Sonak, his light was this... copper color."

"It's ... It's unmistakable, Asa. I find those lights, and I find home. And the more beacons, I think, the better." Dox smiled awkwardly.

“Ok, well, that makes sense, and if a Kolinhar master didn’t poo-poo that, I’m sure not going to. So, what do you need from me? Do I just tell you that I a multi-colored vibrant rainbow of insanity and impossibility? Or perhaps something more helpful?” Asa said, a slight hint of mania starting to creep in.

At which Dox laughed just a little. "Honestly, I don't quite know. I know how I found Mona and Sonak's just pushed in because he was trying to mind meld."

Holding up her hands, still holding Asa's in them, Dox wiggled them. "I was hoping something would come to me for a few minutes now, bit nothing. I'm still not good at this yet. I think I'll need some help from Mona, here."

Scrunching their nose in thought, Asa said, “Well, um, I might have something here….When Clemens decided to flirt with Death, I sent some of my energy into him to use as a tether to find his way back to us. I didn’t see colors or anything, but I could try to send some into you? And maybe you will? Worst case scenario we both wind up with headaches.”

"Headaches, you can fix. Okay... let me concentrate for a second." Dox held onto Asa's hands and closed her eyes again. She slowed her breathing and calmed her mind. As she did, she began to see the crimson light in her mind's eye. It grew brighter, pulsing with each breath. As it grew brighter, she could see the swirls of Mona's blue light dancing inside of her own, like filiments of her loves presence that were now always there. As Dox felt that mental image become clear, she gently nodded to Asa.

After taking a cleansing breath, Asa allowed their eyes to drift closed. The pictured a wellspring of energy in their core, remembering the path they followed to find it with Sam during his stint on death’s door. Feeling the anchor form deep inside their mind, Asa began spooling the “rope” that would connect them to Mnhei’sahe over to her. They fed the rope of personal energy gently into Mnhei’sahe’s waiting core and sent over a mental image of a tentative wave, followed by a question mark.

In her minds eye, the inexperienced young Romulan couldn't perceive the specifics of Asa's message, but she gasped as she felt it. The rope of mental energy reached into the darkness of Dox's mind and spread out like a literal wave of a brilliant, pearlescent lavender light. Asa's energy was incredibly strong on a level Dox hadn't yet experienced.

She sat up quickly and opened her eyes with a smile. "Wow. That... That was you."

Opening one eye, Asa said, “Um, yes? I think? It’s what I did for Sam, so I think that’s me. So, am I fantastic rainbow, or some horrible drab beige? And oh, let me know if you need more or if you want me to withdraw.”

"No, no more." Dox replied as.she let go of Asa's hands. "That was enough. I... wow. It was like a... lavender. But shimmering, like a pearl. But it filled my minds eye. Not drab for sure. But there was so much. Asa... It just kept going."

“Um, sorry?” Asa squeaked in reply, “I…I didn’t mean to flood you. I..I thought that was just a little bit. I’m probably too new to this to guess, huh? Lavender is good though…smells good, looks good, tastes good. Um, do I need to do anything different you can perceive?”

"Oh, no. I'm fine. It was just... kind of awesome. It was just there. It didn't overwhelm me or try and penetrate or force itself in. It was just... like a hug, really." Dox giggled a little. "And... I'm pretty sure you don't have to do anything different. You just have a lot of energy. But I'll be able to find you for sure."

"I guess it makes sense with..." Dox trailed off for a moment as her tone got a little melancholy. "Well, how long you'll live... that you have a lot of you."

“I’m still not entirely sure what to do with that, “ Asa confessed, “I figured I would have 5 millennia or so, like the other El-Aurians. I….I don’t even know what to do with 19,000 years. But nothing is guaranteed, right? Besides, Death didn’t say who’s years. Could be 19,000 years on some planet that makes a rotation of its sun in 2 standard hours or something. Ok, don’t look at me like that, I know the math doesn’t add it, but my point stands. The future changes every day, all we can do is the best with what we have right now, and if my abundance of life can save my best friend, then that’s a good thing.”

"I... I try not to think about that. It's killing me know that my lifespan is almost three times Mona's. Then I think that I'll just... be like a single drop of water in the ocean of your life. Even at five millennia." Dox hung her head a little. "Sorry. Didn't mean to get all bleak. We've got now, right."

The rest of what Mnhei'sahe left unsaid hung in the air a moment befire Asa spoke, "Do you still remember your first best friend? Or the first time you felt loved and accepted for being who you are? Will you ever forget the first time you got to do something you loved? Or the people that made you feel like you could do it? I think its something lime that for us. We never forget the big stuff, or the people we truly love. I dont think even given 100,000 years that any of you will be less important to me, and that just makes now more important, right?"

"I haven't had the chance to forget my first, best friend. You're right here." Dox replied with an awkward smile.

Laying their head on Mnhei’sahe’s shoulder, Asa said softly, “And I always will be, for as long as the fates allow.”