Drinking to remember or forget

Posted on Mon Aug 26th, 2019 @ 3:21pm by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Ahreva Malana & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Mon Aug 26th, 2019 @ 9:42pm

Mission: Family Detention
Location: Ten forward
Timeline: 2396

Thex let out a sigh as she poured another drink from the second bottle she had ordered from the bartender. She poured the last of it into a glass which she downed in one long gulp before slamming it back on the bar. "Another." She called to the bartender who with a sigh placed another bottle of the blue alcohol in front of the chief of engineering.

Walking into Ten-Forward, Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox and Ensign Mona Gonadie had their heads buried in a PaDD. They were off duty but smiling as they were working on something exciting and we're a bit more noticeably affectionate towards each other in the wake of learning that Mona was now pregnant.

As they passed the bar to a nearby table, the red-headed Romulan paused to glance at the bar and noticed Thex. Tapping her bond-mate lightly to stop her, their empathic connection immediately told the Miradonian pilot what she was thinking.

Turning to the bar, Dox knitted her eyebrows, not knowing if she should say anything. Of all the members of the command crew, her relationship with the ships Chief Engineer was likely the least strong. But as a recovering alcoholic, she felt immediate concern over a friend looking upset with a glass in hand.

"Yes, I think that if we put a wall there it would make more room for... Uh... Commander? Is everything okay?" Dox asked.

A sigh so large it quitted the room lept out of Thex throat. Picking up the glass she drank it down again in one gulp before turning on her barstool. " No Dox I'm not okay. Those $%$£$%$% killed him." The Andorian replied gripping her glass so tightly it shattered in her hand. If Thex realized it she didn't appear to notice.

Startled by the shattering, Dox immediately turned to her wife and simply nodded. The two were becoming so close that even with touch telepathy, little was needed to say when needed. Mona had nursed so many of Dox's injuries, self-inflicted and otherwise, that she was practically a field medic.

The brightly plumed aviatrix just nodded and headed behind the bar for the medkit to start working on Thex's hand. She could at least stop the bleeding and heal the musculature and tissues. If there were any bone injuries she might have to call in backup though.

As Mona went around the bar for the medkit, Dox stepped over and raised an eyebrow. While she was just the Flight Control Department, the young Rihannsu woman. Diligently read every section report and security feed and didn't know who might be dead. But she kept her voice calm and steady, getting the distinct impression that Thex was in a place she had been more than once herself emotionally.

"Who, Thex? What's happened?" They were off duty, and calling the Hera's second officer 'Commander' repeatedly would likely push her buttons unnecessarily.

Several seats away, another silent figure took notice of the conversation at the sound of shattered glass and tuned in. Malana was often silently observing the people of Ten Forward and sharing their daily lives with them as a statue would share a park with visitors. She found her observations here to be much more enlightening, however. Taking her mug of ale, she moved down towards the trio to better observe and partake of the conversation if the opportunity should arise.

Thex stared blankly for what felt like an eternity as if her eyes could burn through the walls of the ship and reach the people who had pissed her off so badly. " My little brother," she said coldly her voice seemingly robbed of emotions. " The things that gave birth to me killed him and now my Thavan dares to come to me and asks me to forgive him."

While she spoke four languages, Andorian wasn't one of them, But from the context, Dox felt.safe in assuming 'Thavan' was one of the Chief Engineer's parents. She sat down next to her friend and shipmate, being no stranger to family atrocities. In point of fact, most of the senior staff of the Hera had spilled blood in their family trees. "What happened? To your brother?"

"He died of Seplexia Cataxia. The first case on Andor in over one hundred years. It could have easily been fixed by even the most incompetent doctor on Andor yet they refused to get him treated. All because the treatments creator was a Vulcan. Doesn't matter that the creator loved are people and even married three of us she's Vulcan so she can do no good. " Thex said bitterly.

"There's a word for that in common, isn't there?" Mona asked as she ran a dermal regenerator over the cuts in Thex's hand from the shattered glass. "Something that sounds like biology, right?"

"Bigotry. Xenophobia." Dox nodded grimly. "My people are infamous for theirs, by and large." The scenerio made Dox's stomach tighten. She thought of her best friend, Doctor Asa Dael, who lost their own little brother and mother to an easily curable disease due to their own father's distrust of medicine as she turned back to Thex.

"What did they say to you?"

"I received a communication from the Starfleet refugee complex on earth. My Thavan has claimed asylum on earth after escaping the family compound. Apparently holding his thei in his arms as he chocked on his own blood finally snapped him out of the cults brainwashing. Now after making my childhood a nightmare and having no contact for years he now wants my forgiveness. After not even telling me I had a little brother." Thex said in the same cold tone

The Hera's Second Officer's personnel file was light on specifics, and the two had never spoken much regarding personal issues. But Dox knew that Thex had been raised in a closed compound of Andorian Supremacists that she escaped as a teenager. The cult in question.

"And... Are you going to talk to him?" The red-headed Rihannsu asked, softening her generally gravely voice a hair.

Thex was quiet again as she stared at the floor. All of her life and nothing had helped her figure this one out. " I don't know. He and my other parents made my life a living hell, but..... he's still my Thavan. I don't know what to do Dox."

Crossing her hands on the bar, Dox looked at her knuckles. They had a texture to them that was different. Almost slick. It was what happened when the same skin was healed by a dermal regenerator over and over again over years. As she thought, she noticed a very similar texture to Thex's hands and began to realize just why the two might not have talked as much in the time Dox had been on the Hera. She was just now understanding that they might have more in common then either was comfortable with.

Seeming to focus on the same black spot of floor as the blue-skinned Lieutenant Commander, Dox spoke again after a long, silent pause. "The first time my mother broke one of my bones, I was about six. Maybe seven. It was her way of making me strong, she said. So I could fight through any pain. And that was just the beginning."

"After I escaped from that life at sixteen, I never wanted to see her again. I didn't speak to her for years. Until I realized that I needed to. That I needed to understand why she was so cruel to me. I resisted for years. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of believing that I was running back to her." Dox's voice was more raspy than normal as she hoped she was saying something to help.

"You need that too, I think. Even if what he has to say never makes any sense… You need to give him that chance. Not for him. But for your own piece of mind." The Hera's pilot turned to her superior officer. "And what he has to say… it might help you gain some degree of peace with that pain he put you through. But at least you'll know."

Thex breathed in slightly before she looked up at Dox. " I guess your right, but I have no idea what I'm going to say to him. I fled to the stars to get as far away from them as possible and I thought I'd never see them again."

Looking right back into Thex's eyes, Dox replied plainly. "What do you want to say? I'm him. Tell me what you're feeling." Then she smirked a little. "Just don't hit me. Security will not know what to do."

Unfortunately for Thex all she could think of was hitting him or many other ways of bodily harm to inflict on him. Fortunately, she remained calm and began tapping the bar as she thought the question through. it was a while before she managed a reply. " How could you just sit there and let him die. Did your faith mean more than your son's life?"

Faith, as a concept, was something Dox felt imminently under qualified to answer regarding. The Rihannsu occasionally worshiped the elements. Earth, Air, fire, and water as the components that made up the universe. Some, like her, were raised on the mythology of the great, reborn bird Al'thindor. But faith largely was a blind spot for the red-headed Rihanna woman.

But not as much for her bond-mate, Mona, who had been listening with that focused intensity Dox loved about her. One of the many things she loved about her.

The brightly plumed aviatrix took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to prepare an argument that she had been told many times before. "Everything is as the Moon Goddess wills it. Sometimes people are taken from us by the Trickster before we're ready and it's to make us stronger, But we have to remember that they're in her arms now." With that, she pursed her lips and looked down at the bar, her brows furrowed.

This exchange was starting to elicit a response from Malana, one eyebrow starting to raise. She may interject before too long as it seemed all three of them shared a long history of family issues and loss, just as she did.

Thex had never believed. In her parents cult, she'd lied through her teeth to avoid the teacher's wrath on the matter. Since then her materialist beliefs hadn't changed. This was a world of scientists and engineers, not magic. Still, she said nothing that would insult her shipmate's belief but did mumble out. " I'm sorry, but I see no guiding hand in any of this. Just a zealot who let my little brother die."

"And we now know that, for better or for worse, the gods that we worship are often far more advanced alien races that live much longer lives." Mona was out of steam as well now, having heard a lot of similar rhetoric growing up. "Sorry, I just... I got a lot of it as well. My foster parents are firm believers in the Moon Goddess and that she has a plan for everyone and... But at least they turned it around and made sure all the kids they took in got the best education possible in whatever fields we wanted and didn't shun any forms of science or tech, even if they didn't understand it. That too was all part of Minay's will, they would declare. The one thing they couldn't stand was anyone feeling left out or unloved."

" All my parents did was make my life a living hell. It's far easier to start hating than it is to start learning how to forgive. " Thex responded as she indicated to the bartender that she needed some oxygen pills. She was feeling light-headed.

"They made your life a living hell... and I'm thinking that on some level you're thinking about what this will say about you." Dox turned to look at Thex, who seemed to be spiraling.

"You aren't them, Thex. You know that. But you've got children of your own on the way and this is a very bitter reminder of where you came from. A place I'm betting you've been trying hard to forget." Dox was speaking from experience with the recent knowledge that she and Mona had children of their own on the way.

"But until you talk to him, your doubt is going to keep eating at you. As much as it hurts to think about, I think you need to open that door, Thex." The red-headed Rihannsu woman sighed. "You owe it to yourself to get some sense of closure. And for those two on the way."

The Andorian let out a slight sigh as the bartender handed her a few oxygen pills. " I guess your right. Even if it ends with me telling him never to contact me again it would be something. Not like he can mess my life up worse than he already tried to do."

"He can sure as Areinnye complicate it, though." Dox cursed slightly in her native Rihan with a slight chuckle. "I'm sorry you're going through this, Thex. And I wish there was some easy answer for it all. I'd use it myself if there was. But you're strong. You have your quad and you have all of us. And if speak to him, you won't be doing it alone. You'll half the crew in the other room waiting for you. That's how this works here on the Hera."

Then she dragged a finger through the spilled drink on the counter and gave it a sniff. "Yeah. 2258. I donated a crate to the bar when I gave it up. This never makes anything better."

"Has for me. One of the benefits of a high alcohol tolerance. Still, I need to get detoxed. I am the acting captain of this ship. " The Andorian said as she downed the pills. She'd need to stop by sickbay for a full detox shot, but the pills always helped.

Biting her proverbial tongue, Dox looked down at the chief engineer's hands that had been bleeding only a few minutes prior. She wasn't going to challenge her commanding officer on the finer points of denial for alcoholics, so instead, she nodded and smiled. "That's likely a very good idea, Commander. Just... think about it. You aren't alone here."

"I know Dox. " The Andorian said as she tapped her friend reassuringly on the shoulder

Smiling, Dox simply nodded In reply. "Then better let Asa get you right."

The literal stone-faced watcher gently set the mug she held down and slowly furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. It seemed that the three of these fleshy types shared something with her - family issues. The details were definitely different, but the effects were the same. She had rejected the purist watcher mentality that her people adhered to and contacted Starfleet to embrace what her people considered heresy.

There was no deity or religion that demanded her people do this, however... It was more akin to Vulcan logic or the biological need for fleshy types to eat to survive. When her people were still for long periods of time, they lived considerably longer. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the skilled stonemasons on Meroset and Doctor Dael, her own lifespan would have been reduced by much longer than she would have cared to think about due to her 'heretical calling'.

Then her thoughts turned towards relating her experiences to helping her friends and acquaintances here and now - something else that her people considered heretical. However, these sorts of thoughts did not come naturally to her people so her brow furrowed further in concentration.

It was a level of concentration that did not go unnoticed by the attentive Chief Flight officer. Dox might not have been a command officer outside the flight deck, but her nature compelled her to often take on such a role that extended to her reading up on mission reports and crew rosters. So while the two had never interacted before in the time she was onboard the Hera, Dox was well aware of Malana.

Turning slightly from her emotionally conflicted Lieutenant Commander that she was trying to help, Dox raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Miss Malana, correct? Are you okay?"

Malana relaxed her features at the sound of her name and fixed the source of the sound with her stony gaze. "Yes, I am... No... I... I find myself in a similar situation and I wish to offer... Support?" Malana then reached out to rest one cool, stony hand on Thex's shoulder. "I stand with you in solidarity in this matter."

Thex gave Malana hand a reassuring pat. " I appreciate that Malana same to the rest of you. Now I just need to work out what I'm going to say to him."