Where Else Would I be?

Posted on Sat Sep 21st, 2019 @ 3:00pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Family Detention
Location: Brig, the People's Will
Timeline: 2396

Sitting in the small, cold, dimly let cell on the Romulan Warbird that was her prison, Lieutenant Mnhei’sahe Dox wept.

Shackled in her cold steel seat, unable to move her hands or feet, all she could do was cry and look out at the drying puddle of her father’s blood on the deck plates in front of her. Her eyes were thick and rimmed green and her face was puffy and swollen. She had lost track of how long she had been crying since she watched Riov Rendal execute Dralath tr'Rul right there in front of her. An incentive for Mnhei'sahe to give up the secrets of the Hera to the Tal’Shiar.

One of the three incentives they had. The other two were in different cells in the narrow, dark corridor. Her mother, Jaeih Dox and her Grandmother, the Rihannsu Senator, Verelan t’Rul. Both now prisoners of Riov Dalia Rendal. Both now victims of torture and pain because of Mnhei’sahe Dox’s failures. Then came the final threat. Rendal pulled out Dox's ceremonial wedding bracelet as additional leverage. A threat against Mona.

As her own raking sobs finally slowed, and her breathing began to calm, Dox was light-headed and exhausted. She had already been a captive for over two weeks, but they were two weeks of comparatively gentle treatment before now. Her grandmother had tried to reach out and convince Mnhei’sahe to embrace her family and heritage willingly. The elder Deihu filled the young Starfleet officer with stories of family, the home she had never seen, the life she could have. The answers to a lost little girl's childhood fantasies. But accepting so would have cost her her new life. Her marriage and the children on the way. And it would have cost her her mother.

Also captive, Jaeih was being used as leverage to ensure compliance and for two weeks, Dox complied. She listened to the stories and absorbed the lessons and was beginning to falter. She was beginning to want what her grandmother was offering. And when it became clear that if she did so, her mother would become expendable, Dox was forced to make a choice and take a stand. So stand she did.

And in doing so, played into the hands of the cruel Romulan Commander, Dalia Rendal. Rendal used Dox’s impassioned attempt to reach out and convince her grandmother to see reason as justification to orchestrate a coup. She took over the mission and the ship and detained Verelan t’Rul as a traitor. And she had already begun torturing the elder stateswoman to prove to Dox that she would.

It was over. There was nothing left for Mnhei’sahe Dox to do. No more options left to try and exploit. Rendal had her. Had what was left of her family. All she could do was hope she could resist enough to deny Rendal her final prize: The secrets of the Gods contained on the Hera. And those contained in her own mind. All she had left was the hope she could hold out long enough to protect those secrets until it was time for Masato Rei to come and claim her too.

Restrained, she couldn’t even attempt to deny Rendal by taking her own life. What was once her final answer if all else failed was no longer even an option. She had gambled and lost everything. And as she sat, her head dangling over in the darkness, all she could hear was the hum of the ship's engines as they raced towards Romulus to die… and the raspy breathing of her grandmother in a cell down the corridor.

Her mother’s breathing, she couldn’t hear. She had no idea what condition either was in. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to say something. Would Rendal punish them further if she tried to talk to them? She no longer trusted anything she thought. She had failed so utterly that she didn’t know what left she could do to the degree that even speaking frightened her. She was no Starfleet officer. She was a scared child in a cage waiting to fail one last time.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the only thing she still had. The only thing left Rendal couldn’t take from her. In the darkness of her mind’s eye was still the swirling lavender energy that gave her the only comfort she had left. The piece of her wife and bond-mate, Mona Gonadie that was forever a part of her own soul. That piece that was, perhaps, all that was left of her own.

With her eyes still closed, she reached out to that energy in front of her and slowly, softly, began to speak. She didn’t know if she was speaking to Mona, half a galaxy away or the family there on the ship, or just to herself. But she spoke anyway. “If you can hear me, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry that I failed you. I’m sorry that I failed them. But I did. I did everything I could think to do and it’s only made everything worse. They’ve taken… everything. All I have left is my mind and they will be coming for that soon as well.” Dox spoke, just a little louder. As she did, she wasn’t even consciously aware she was speaking in her native tongue of Rihan, and didn’t really care. She just had to talk.

Since she had been taken, she had tried to reach out to Mona with their telepathic link that usually required physical contact. But in her desperation she had tried anyway, not knowing if her whispered thoughts were carrying or being heard. But still, she hoped. And still, she spoke.

“I didn’t mean for everything to go so wrong. I should have just given up. I should have just given in. But I thought I could be… more than what I am. I thought I could do the right thing. I was… I was so scared that I wanted what I was being offered. I wanted the home being given to me and I’m ashamed of that desire. I knew that if I kept walking… turned my back on my mother one last time... that I would lose her. That I would lose myself completely. And I couldn’t do that. So instead, I doomed everyone by trying to be a hero. Trying to be what Rita thought I could be. Because I thought I was better than I was. Because I thought I could be stronger than I was. I should have just given in. Conceded. I’m sorry I’m not what you thought I was. What you thought I could be. I’m sorry.”

As she went on, even she didn't know if she was really speaking to Mona on the Hera, or to her mother or to her grandmother, both in separate cells down the corridor… or just herself. And she had no idea if any of them could even hear, but she had to say it.

“I tried. I tried so hard to be what everyone else thought I could be. I tried to be a good officer. I tried to be a wife and a daughter and a friend and in the end, I even tried to be a granddaughter.” As she spoke, tears began to flow again, stinging her already burned eyes that she thought had no more tears to give as her voice dropped to an inaudible whisper. “It’s better this way, I think. It’s better that this all end out here like this. So they’ll never know. So that I’ll at least never be able to fail… to fail them. Just… when they’re born… please don’t tell them that their mother was a failure, Mona. Don’t let them live with that.”

As she spoke, her head sunk low and she quietly cried. Whatever strength she still had was gone. Spent. She felt like an empty thing waiting to die and she found herself looking forward to seeing the face of Masato Rei one last time to put an end to the farce that was Mnhei’sahe Dox.

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After an hour of hanging her head passed, and another, and another, she thought she heard something. Bootsteps in the corridor. Not Rendal’s or her Centurions. These were familiar somehow. Impossibly familiar, considering where she was. It was that quick paced, martial stride she had learned to keep up with and match over the last year on the Hera. And as she looked up through groggy, tear stained eyes, there stood Commander Rita Paris.

“R...Rita?” Dox muttered to herself. “You… you shouldn’t be here.”

“Nonsense. Where else would I be?” The impossible woman replied with a voice that was both Rita’s and not Rita’s. “So, let me guess, Lieutenant. They’ve been dragging you through your past and now you’re sitting there blaming yourself for everything, right? That is your default pattern, isn’t it? Hw'm I doing?”

“Shut up. You’re not here. You don’t know.” Dox hung her head again and mumbled a weak response. Neither woman was speaking the same language, but they understood each other all the same. As usual, Rita a little more than not.

“Oh, I know. I know that you’re being manipulated, plain and simple. They’re pulling at everything you’ve ever wanted while threatening everything you’ve gained and your head is spinning trying to not drown from it all.” Rita replied, a snap in her voice designed to make Dox pay attention. And slowly, the embattled Lieutenant raised her head, an angry look on her face now.

“It’s my fault. It’s my fault they’re being tortured. It’s MY FAULT HE’S DEAD!!” Dox growled at the ghost in front of her.

But Rita’s inscrutable expression remained fixed as she looked down at the young prisoner. “That's not true, and you know it.”

"If not for me none of us would be here." Dox protested weakly.

“Also untrue, and while it is delightful that you try to make this all about you, you already know that isn't true either. What did you do wrong? Take your family to dinner? Choose to actively try and NOT kill your attackers?” Rita raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. “Stop me when I get to the massive screw up at the heart of all this, Miss Dox.”

Dox scoffed and blinked through heavily lidded eyes as she raspily replied. “This whole situation is my fault.”

Sighing, Rita shook her head. “Are you really going to make me run down, item by item, all of the reasons it isn't? Because viewed objectively, it's quite clear that it's not. So while it's adorable how much you want to wallow in this guilt trough of yours, it's time for you to put on your officer's panties and figure out how to keep you, your mother and your grandmother alive long enough for a chance to escape or for help to arrive. Because no matter what, you know we're coming. Like a goddamn ion storm, Enalia Telvan will not rest until she finds you.”

“That’s what they WANT, Rita! They want the Hera to come after us!” Dox protested, louder as her voice cracked and broke.

“This is not our first rodeo, Miss Dox. Enalia’s wrestled with the Tal’Shiar before and you know it. And you know we’re not stupid, so that’s not what you’re really worried about, is it?” Rita kneeled down, closer to Dox’s eye level with that perplexing expression she mastered. That look of a parent explaining something simple to a child.

“They took… they took everything. I can’t… I can’t… I can’t let them take you too. You, Enalia, Asa… Mona. I’m not worth risking your lives over.” Dox hung her head and fresh tears flowed through chapped eyelids, stinging as they came.

“Didn’t you once tell me something along the lines of how you’d turn time inside out to come after me if I was ever lost in it again? How dare you expect any less of us, Rinam.” Rita spoke firmly, with that familiar fire in her voice as she evoked the Rihan word for ‘sister’. One of the very few words in the language that she knew.

“Now Lieutenant, I expect better of you, and when I read your report on all of this after you are back on the Hera, you can leave out your night of guilt and grief, because it's understandable. Now it's time to make a plan and rise to the occasion, and show this smug Tal’Shiar bitch how honorable Starfleet officers comport themselves, and how we've consistently outsmarted the Star Empire for the past two hundred years.” Rita stood back up at military attention and spoke with that authoritative voice of hers that made gods pay attention.

Gods… and guilt-ridden Lieutenants that forgot who they were.

“Aye… aye, Commander.” She said, weakly.

“What was that, Lieutenant?” Rita replied with a smirk.

“Aye, Commander.” The emotional young red-head replied, voice still cracked, but with more strength behind it. “But. I… I don’t know how.”

Kneeling down again, Rita put her hand on Dox’s chin and raised it up to meet her gaze. “Yes you do, Lieutenant. Yes, you do.”

And with that, she was alone again in the cell. Still shackled and still alone. There was no Rita Paris, just Mnhei’sahe Dox and the little voice in her head that she deferred to when she was lost. Her own personal ‘lost navigator’ that forced her to ask the questions she often didn’t want to ask and answer them with a determined, “What would Rita Paris do?”