Running in Circles

Posted on Sat Aug 17th, 2019 @ 4:37pm by Kodria Mizu & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Jaeih Dox-t'Aan
Edited on on Sat Aug 17th, 2019 @ 4:37pm

Mission: Mudd on the Souls of Mankind
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: 2396

“Three..." The thirty-two year-old Romulan woman muttered to herself, standing in the center of the Holodeck of the U.S.S. Hera. "Three chicks. Three children."

It had been a full day since she had learned, while in sickbay herself recovering from injuries sustained during an away mission, that her wife and bond-mate, Mona Gonadie, had successfully become pregnant. Pregnant with three perfectly healthy half-Miradonian, half-Romulan children. Doctor Dael hypothesized that they would very likely be girls, having two biological mothers. And so, the anxious young pilot just stood in the black and gold gridded room, still in mild shock. "Three girls."

Shaking her head, her hair still long and pulled back into a ponytail after it had been cosmetically extended for her recent away mission, Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox was in her crimson uniform with the tunic unfastened at the top as she was off duty and needed to clear her head.

Usually, that meant a couple of different programs. There was always her sparring dummy program which she was tempted to activate as her performance against the criminal, Davo Mudd, had left her pride wounded during her away mission. Having been caught completely off guard by the temporal terrorist and clamped with an agonizer that completely incapacitated her. The pain was so unbearable that her muscles completely locked up making her unable to resist or fight back at all, as Mudd grabbed her by the hair and sliced her arm open to show her green, Romulan blood to the crowd of drunken racists back on 21st Century Earth.

He had snuck up on her and rendered her worse than useless- he used her as a weapon against the rest of the crew. And she was still angry to have been defeated so easily. It did little to reduce the sting that Mudd also incapacitated the Klingon security Amazon, Petty Officer S'Rina. After all, logic was a VULCAN quality, and Romulans tended to lean on their passions. And right there, Dox's passions were very, very confused.

As upset as she was at her failure on the Away mission, and as concerned that she was that said failure would make Commander Paris reconsider taking her on future missions as a result, her mind was still more overwhelmed by the knowledge that she was to be a mother. A mother of THREE.

So, while she was hardly dressed for it, her other main program to help herself relax was more called for. "Computer. Please run Dox starship hull running program zero zero seven. U.S.S. Exeter. Thank you."


=^=You're welcome, Lieutenant Dox.=^=, the Hera's unconventional computer replied pleasantly as the room shimmered for a moment, and Dox suddenly found herself standing on the exterior saucer of a perfect holographic replica of the classic, Constitution-class Starship as it floated in a 3-D representation of space. It was Dox's favorite program and she had created over a dozen ship exteriors to explore or jog on.This one in particular was a version of the starship that First officer Rita Paris had once served upon in another universe, another time. A version of the starship of which Dox had a model on her desk in the Flight Control Office. A starship of which M’nhei’sahe had become inexplicably fond.

Undoing the rest of her uniform top, she removed the crimson source of pride, folded it neatly and sat it down off to the side and began to stretch. Now wearing only her uniform pants, boots and a snug black sports bra and undershirt, she was beginning to loosen herself up. Or at least was trying to, when the holodeck door wooshed open.

From out in the corridor, stepped the young red-headed Romulan woman’s mother, Intelligence Operative Jaeih Dox. The elder Romulan stood in the archway to the holodeck as the door slid closed behind her and vanished, resuming the illusion once more. As it did, Jaeih looked around the simulated environment. “An impressive vista. May I enter?”

Rolling her eyes slightly as she stretched out her calves, Mnhei’sahe replied. “You already have Mother. Is there something wrong?”

“Hu’nanov.” Jaeih replied in their native Rihan, the word for ‘Grandmother’, as she walked over to where her daughter was stretching. “Well, not yours, of course, but I do find I like the title. And no, nothing is amiss. I simply wished to see you and the computer told me you were in here. Is there something wrong with you? This is quite an unusual program. This is the ship on your desk, correct?”

“Essentially. The U.S.S Exeter. The model on my desk is the refit version of the ship. Both are versions of one of the ships Commander Paris served on in her own time, and she left me the model when I was promoted to the head of that department.” Mnhei’sahe replied, now reaching her arm over her head and stretching out her sides. “I like taking my jogs on Starship saucers. It’s a much more enjoyable view than the track in the gym.”

As her daughter finished her stretches, Jaeih raised an eyebrow. “That answered the latter question, not the former, Mnhei’sahe. You are troubled? Is this about the children?”

“What, no!?” the newfound mother to be replied sharply and indignantly at the question, but also didn’t want to go into details on her failure against Mudd in Montana. After all, her mother spent almost Mnhei’sahe’s entire childhood teaching her Llaekh-ae'rl, a particularly brutal martial art, and as bad as it was to be taken hostage in front of Rita, it was even worse to admit that to her former teacher.

“I’m extremely happy about that. Almost as happy as you are that you learned about them before I did.” Mnhei’sahe shot back, referencing the fact Jaeih clearly looked proud about.

“Well, I AM in Intelligence. It would be unseemly to be the last to know something like that.” Jaeih replied with a smug smirk. “So, if not that, what’s wrong?”

Rolling her eyes, Mnhei’sahe rolled out her neck, finishing up her stretching. “I’m here to exercise, Mother. If you want to talk, you’ll need to keep up.”

“Very well.” Jaein replied flatly as she undid her own gray Starfleet tunic and folded it on the deck next to her daughter’s. Stretching out quickly, she stepped beside her daughter and gestured before them to the expanse of greenish-gray simulated duranium that was the hull of the Exeter. “After you, my dear.”

Starting to jog clockwise around the rim of the saucer, the anxious Lieutenant sighed. “The Captain has her coronation ceremony tomorrow. I just found out about it, and I need to be in attendance as one of her Baronesses. In order to do so, I need to wear a very tight, white Artan uniform. Ridiculously tight, really. But the rest of those women are all pretty damn trim, so I need to firm up a little bit before the morning, so I don’t look any more out of place than I already do there.”

Jogging alongside her, Jaeih tilted her head slightly to look at her daughters face. “Well, I doubt that among the Baronesses, most who will be preening for attention, you will stand out in any respect that should concern you, my dear. But, no. There’s something more. Please talk to me, Mnhei’sahe?”

Picking up the pace, the aggravated officer sped up into a light run, getting more irritated by the intrusion into her exercise time. Normally, she would be running with Rita Paris, but considering her current mental state, she didn’t know if that was the best idea. And now, her own mother had appeared to take the commander’s place in digging through her psyche. “I’m FINE. I’m going to be a parent. Mona’s safe. The chicks are healthy. You and your team completed your mission and Moira’s recovering well. They stopped Mudd and saved the timeline and…”

As she spoke, Jaeih cut her off mid-sentence. “’THEY’, Mnhei’sahe? You were on that team? Why not ‘we’?”

At which point, the frustrated Romulan’s nerves went from frustrated to angry as she broke into a full-on run. Jaeih, although much slimmer, had to work to keep up as her daughter ran with Rita weekly on top on the rest of her stringent exercise routines. “Because ’WE’ didn’t screw up, Mother! That was all ME! That’s why! Because, while it’s not in the history books because Rita cleaned up after me! Thanks to ME, humanity got to meet a kreldanni ROMULAN a few days before first contact with the Vulcans!”

As they worked their way around the rim of the simulated saucer, Jaeih began to slip ever so slightly behind, breathing a little heavy, which surprised her as much as her daughter’s outburst. “What happened… Mnhei’sahe? How did you fail?"

Stopping dead in her tracks, the younger Dox turned around, her thick cheeks flushed green and her eyes looking desperate. “I was supposed to be on perimeter! WATCHING for trouble! Watching for Mudd to make his move! And he did! He ran right up behind me and slapped an Agonizer on me! Then he picked me up by my kreldanni hair and cut me! Showed off my blood to the whole crowd!"

Running the moment back again, out loud, was enough to make Mnhei'sahe furious at herself again. "So YES, Everything you taught me… all that training and I got ambushed like a child!!!

There was silence for a moment as Jaeih stood, watching her daughter silently as the two caught their breath. Then, after what felt like an eternity of uncomfortable silence. "You mean this?"

Then the elder woman looked up and spoke again. "Computer. Play holographic recording from recovered sensor logs of Runabout Danu. Time index 22:37."

As Jaeih spoke, there was a chirp as the vista shimmered around them and the hull of the Exeter vanished, replaced with a slightly low-resolution recreation of the bar in Bozeman, Montana recorded both a few days ago and a few centuries past. Mnhei'sahe looked around and saw Rita standing on the bar speaking to the large crowd of drunk patrons. She saw herself in her civilian disguise watching from the side entrance to the largely open walled structure. Then she looked back at her mother with narrowed eyes. "What is this, Mother?"

"Just watch, Mnhei'sahe." Jaeih replied, never taking her eyes off of the holographic representation of her daughter in disguise.

The scene played out, slightly blurry and slightly incomplete. At the bar, Rita was standing atop it making the rousing speech she had made days ago to try and turn the tide of xenophobia Mudd had been stoking. It was clearly working, as the crowd rose to its collective feet and began to cheer her on. Jaeih commented flatly, "The woman does have a way with words, doesn't she?"

Ignoring the rhetorical question, Mnhei'sahe looked at Rita as the room erupted in cheering and boisterous applause. "Computer, freeze." Jaeih called out and the image locked in place.

"Now, don't watch the crowd. Don't watch Commander Paris. Don't even look for Mudd." Jaeih walked around her daughter like a stern teacher, her arms folded behind her back. "Look at yourself. Computer, resume."

As it did, the younger Dox did as she was told and looked at herself in the recreation made from the sensors of the Runabout that had been in geosynchronous orbit directly overhead. Sensors that recorded the events almost perfectly.

"What do you see?" Jaeih spoke bluntly from behind Mnhei'sahe. "The crowd is at their feet. You've stepped back, taken your hands out of your pockets. Now you are surveying the crowd. looking over each face, each HAND. Why?"

"I'm looking for threats. Making sure nobody is pulling a weapon on R… on Commander Paris. Looking for Mudd. We had his general position, but Yeoman Dedjoy couldn't get an exact target. He was masking his…"

As she spoke, a black darkness crept into the image from behind her holographic representation. As it happened in reality, she turned and raised her arm up in defense as soon as the sounds of footfalls became clear. "Where is he?" The real Mnhei'sahe said, confused.

Then the scene played out as it did. The agonized was slapped on her arm and in and instant she seized up and crumpled. As it began, Jaeih spoke up again. "Computer, end program."

As she did, the program shimmered away and they were standing again on the blank grid of the holodeck. Jaeih seemed slightly distressed and Mnhei'sahe was just confused. "I… do not like watching the next part. Seeing you affected by that horrible device."

"Where was Mudd, mother? Why didn't the computer show him?" Mnhei'sahe asked.

"After you returned, Commander Paris came to me in the Intel department and asked me to review then log the sensor recordings from your mission. Of course, Intel Chief Clemens was on that same mission, so it seemed like an odd order until I reviewed the files myself. You chose your bond-sister well." Jaeih added, mentally noting Rita's skill at knowing when a situation might have needed not a commander's reassurance, but a mother's

"Anyway, Mister Mudd isn't in the recording because he had shielded himself from the ships sensors. Your sensors couldn't detect him. And in the din of that noise, I didn't hear a thing until you did in reality."

"You had every reason to believe the threat was to come from that crowd. That Mudd was hidden among those backwards humans. You did exactly what you should have done. You stepped back to get a better view of the situation. You prepared yourself for action. You surveyed the crowd for any possible threat. You were ready to protect your Commander and the mission."

"And yes, he defeated you. He took advantage of you looking out for your Commander to exploit a blind spot you still have. You will defend to the death those you care for, but not so much yourself." Jaeih said directly but with a hint of compassion in her voice.

"Meaning what, Mother?" Mnhei'sahe replied bruskly.

"You put yourself last. You devalue your own safety. Sometimes you WANT to get hurt... or worse, I fear." Jaeih shouted, pain in her voice. "You must be better than that, Mnhei'sahe! You NEED to be, now!"

Immediately, the younger woman's stomach tightened as she realized what her mother was talking about as her eyes went wide.

"I know that I failed you in every conceivable way as a Mother, Mnhei'sahe. I know that I made you want to give up so many times, but… you can't. Not now. Not now."

"A… Asa asked me the same… I'm… I'm not trying to… I'm not trying to die Mother." Mnhei'sahe replied, her voice breaking at a tone she had never heard from her mother before: desperation.

"Do you think I don't KNOW that I need to be better? I have been trying to be better every DAY! You have no idea how hard it's been, Mother! NO idea how hard I've worked at BURYING everything I was before!" Mnhei'sahe shouted back, holding back tears.

"And… and now I have to hope it hasn't all been for nothing! I have to PRAY that I don't screw this up by being who I AM with those children." Mnhei'sahe broke, tears streaming down her face now as she stumbled backwards and flumped to the deck where she sat, hunched over.

"I… I can't do this. I don't know how…" the fragile young officer muttered under your breath.

"Yes, you do." Jaeih said almost flatly, standing over her daughter before kneeling down on one knee before her. "You can because you have to. Because you understand duty. Because you have always embodied the name that I gave you on the day you were born. You are my ruling passion. You give of yourself for the needs of others. What was used against you in battle is what will make you the mother I could never be for you, Mnhei'sahe."

"Those children will have your incomparable strength and Mona's infinite compassion. They will shake the heavens with all you both will have to give. Of that I have no doubt." Jaeih reached over and lifted her daughters chin up to meet her eyes.

Pulling her chin free, Mnhei'sahe lowered her head and sighed. "Just leave me alone, Mother."

Pausing for a moment, Jaeih sat on the deck in front of her damaged daughter and took a breath. “No."

"That was one of my many mistakes raising you. Out of fear, I backed away when I knew I should have tried to help you.”

“I had no idea what I was doing, Mnhei’sahe. And I did virtually anything and everything I could do incorrectly. I… defaulted to the only thing I knew and tried to prepare you for what horrors I knew were out there waiting. LOOKING for you.” Jaeih now seemed to be fighting her own emotions. “As such, I was more your commanding officer than I was a mother and… I cannot apologize enough for that. I can’t.”

The elder Romulan hung her own head while her daughter listened. “I made you a good officer, but a damaged woman. I know that. I ignored your pains and needs in favor of structure and discipline. I looked the other way when I found you… hurting yourself. I looked the other way when I saw you on the security feed in the… in the airlock.”

Immediately, Mnhei’sahe’s head jerked up as she wiped her cheeks with her arm. “What? You… you knew?”

“That just before we were caught, you would spend half the night sitting in the ship’s airlock with your hand on the release lever. That you did that every night for months?” Jaeih sat, looking at the deck between them with a lost expression. “Yes. I knew. At first, I was angry. How dare you be so weak. So willing to throw away what I had trained you so hard to protect. I was selfish. I looked on your pain and only saw how it made me feel, and anger was easier to process than… responsibility.”

Still, Mnhei’sahe’s expression was just shock as she listened.

“By the time you stopped… and sabotaged the ships cloaking device so we were caught by Starfleet… I knew. I mean… I figured out later what you had done. But even at the time, I had a strong feeling that regardless, it was a good thing.” Jaeih wiped the few scant tears she had allowed to escape clear. “I knew it would be better for you to be raised by strangers on an alien world, than me.”

“Anything you think you might fail at as a Mother, I have failed at a thousand times over, my dear.” Jaeih looked up and forced a slight smile. “It may, in fact, be impossible for you to fail at this by direct comparison. You have quite possibly the worst living example of how to do everything wrong to draw upon as needed.”

That elicited the slightest of smiles from the face of the broken pilot as she sat there, sniffling and feeling very much like a child again. “I’m afraid, Mother. I’m so afraid. I thought I was as ready as I could be, but…”

Scooching closer, Jaeih put her hand on her daughters knee, moving with slight hesitation. “Good. Be afraid. I wasn’t afraid enough for the right reasons. I was afraid for myself. You be afraid for those three perfect creations. Be so afraid that you will be the woman I know you already are. The woman who will tear herself down and rebuild herself every day to wipe away a single frown.”

“I did everything I could imagine wrong by you, Mnhei’sahe.” Jaeih smiled, “And you grew to become ten times the woman I have ever been. You are a respected officer. And Paris is right, one day, you will be a celebrated commander in your own right. You are mighty and you are good. You are everything I imagined our people could become again. And you will be an exceptional mother. Because if it can be done, than I know you can do it.”

"I guess... I guess we'll see." Mnhei'sahe replied, weakly.

"Yes we will. And I've been informed by Mona that I have no choice but to be here with you for it all. So there's that." Jaeih said with a slight smirk, which immediately made her daughters stomach tightened. For months, the words of Masato Rei, the woman known as the embodiment of Death itself, and the holographic recordings of the android Kodria both predicted an unknown fate for the elder Romulan.

Both women cryptically warned Mnhei'sahe to cherish the time she had remaining with her mother, for it was limited. The red-headed Romulan didn't quite know exactly what that meant, but she feared it all the same. She worked to heed the advice while trying to ignore its potential implications. What would happen would happen and attempting to stop fate could lead to even worse outcomes, so she tried her best to smile and not think about it. But the idea that her children wouldn't get to know their Grandmother created an unpleasant feeling in the stomach of the young Romulan woman.

A feeling that wasn't helped by the sudden appearance of a green and purple holographic Cheshire cat that materialized on the holodeck and began to walk between the two, rubbing against Mnhei'sahe's folded up legs as she sat.

"Uh... what program are you running, Mnhei'sahe?" Jaeih asked, confused but grinning in spite of herself at the unusual sight.

"I'm not doing this, Mother. This is Maru. This... is essentially the Hera itself, for lack of a better term." Mnhei'sahe replied as she almost instinctively ran her hand down the back of the pleasantly purring holographic feline before addressing the being that once saved her life. "Is something wrong?"

Maru sat down and looked up at a holographic LCARs display reminiscent of the ones in the intel pod as it materialized with a blinking message waiting logo. After a moment, the blinking stopped and the screen expanded into a multitude of screens, the holographic form of Kodria forming in front of them.

The young android smiled and waved pleasantly. "Hey auntie, it's me again, with another warning."

At the sight of the holographic representation of Kodria on the screen, in spite of the fact that she was there with a warning, Mnhei'sahe couldn't help but smile. After all, knowing what she knew and her roll in raising the youthful Andriod from her future, it was reassuring that she might be able to pull of being a mother.

Turing to see the screen, Jaeih was less pleased by the happenings. "What in the hell is going on, Mnhei'sahe? 'Auntie'?"

"It's a long story, Mother. This is Kodria. She visited us from the future some months ago. Long story short, she's an Android and the Granddaughter of the Captain. But, apparently, many of us on the Hera will help raise her, myself included. Before she was put into stasis to be woken back up after the point in the future where she returned to our past, she recorded a series of messages for us." Mnhei'sahe replied, almost matter of factly to her stunned mother.

"Well, of course. That makes perfect sense." Jaeih replied sarcastically as the younger Dox noticed that the message didn't pause while she explained, but rather was still running and it was the representation of Kodira that was waiting, which was quite curious.

"Hello, Kodria. Go ahead." Dox replied, standing up to look the holographic Android in the eye, speaking as if she was simply speaking to the android herself.

"I've got two warnings for you this time," Kodria began, her countenance turning grim. "Hopefully, this message triggered at the right time for them to be of use to you. In the upcoming days, things are going to go sideways and Mona Gonadie is going to try to do something dumb. If my calculations are correct, she's now pregnant with chicks. They're far too precious to the timeline and she needs to trust in those around her to do the right thing."

Pausing for a moment, the young android from the future looked between the two woman to let that sink in. "The second warning is for your mother. Things are in motion that no one can stop. Enjoy the time you have while you have it and don't leave any regrets behind. The future isn't written yet... But I'd like to think it's good advice. I got it from Auntie Dox, after all."

With a bit of a lopsided grin similar to the captain's, the holographics closed down and faded away.

As the message vanished, leaving Mnhei'sahe and Jaeih alone in the holodeck, he messages and their meanings swirled in the young pilot's mind. But none as specific as the wording Kodria mentioned. 'The future isn't written yet.' kept repeating in Mnhei'sahe's mind.

"What... what did all of that mean, Mnhei'sahe? You said she's from... the future? Enjoy my time? What the hell does that mean?" Jaeih replied, as close to dumbstruck as the elder intel agent could be.

"She's from a future that we undid, but she still exists so far, so the worst parts of her timeline won't come to pass. I think what she was saying was that we're... writing our own future now." Mnhei'sahe said, feeling a welling up of what she could only describe as hope. There was a chance that her mother's fate wasn't written in the stars. "And that you have Grandkids to look forward to seeing."