Post-Action Debriefing: Lieutenant Dox

Posted on Sat Oct 19th, 2019 @ 7:01pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Mon Oct 28th, 2019 @ 9:57am

Mission: Family Detention
Location: The Golden Ghost Conference Room
Timeline: 2396 - Post-Rescue

Walking slowly through the corridors of the Golden Ghost, Mnhei'sahe Dox's head seemed to almost wobble on her neck as she held it as high as she could, but it was an act of considerable effort for the young Rihannsu woman at the moment. 

Escorted by a member of the Artan-Run Rihannsu Privateer vessel, the Golden Ghost, she had just come from the small, oddly claustrophobic quarters she had been assigned to for the five-day journey from ch'Rihan to the Hera, waiting on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. She had only gone in to the chamber to take a brief sonic shower and change into the clean clothes left for her. a simple black, pull-over top and black uniform pants.

Internally, Dox had desperately wished it was her crimson Starfleet uniform, but as she walked to the ship's conference room for her first official debriefing, her mind was a cottony mess of self-doubt. Knowing all that had happened during the month she had been both prisoner and so-called guest of the Rihannsu Warbird, The People's Will, Mnhei'sahe wondered if she would ever wear a Starfleet uniform again.

While she was clean and freshly dressed, she looked haggard. Her curly red hair was slightly disheveled and her eyes were slightly sunken, with dark green bags under them.

Her escort waited outside the door to her room while she had showered, and before that, he followed her to the few places she had been allowed to go on the ship since she arrived with the rescue team from the Hera. But she knew what he really was. Another Rihannsu guard on another Rihannsu ship that, in the night since her arrival, had come to feel entirely too much like the People's Will to her. At the moment, pending what was sure to be an avalanche of debriefings, hearings, and reviews, she was viewed as a potential security risk. As such, her guard was there to make sure she didn't go anywhere off-limits. 

As she approached the room, the door already open, Mnhei'sahe clutched the small Artan PaDD she held in her hands, crossed in front of her and took a deep breath. Then, stepping into the doorway, she stood at attention and paused as she stopped herself from starting with Lieutenant Dox and simply said, "Reporting as ordered, Commander."

Looking up from the paperwork she was reviewing, Commander Rita Paris looked the woman over slowly and thoughtfully, tapped out something on her PaDD, then spoke to the Miradonian in the corner. “Mister Fritterson, go take a break. I’ll call you when you’re needed.”

In the corner, the Miradonian looked somewhat puzzled, but silently complied with the request and left the room. Once he was gone, Paris spoke again, gesturing to the seat opposite her across the table.

“Take a seat, Miss Dox,” Paris ordered, rising from her own chair to come around the table and park her miniskirted rear on the edge of the desk in a surprisingly casual manner. "For the record, this part is off the record. We’ll get to the debriefing and your initial report, and all of the attendant bureaucracy and paperwork and counseling and everything else, but… for now, talk to me. You look like hell, and where’s your uniform? Did you even sleep last night?”

Sitting down, Mnhei'sahe put her PaDD down on the table and bit the bottom of her lip slightly. "I... according to every regulation I read... my commission is on suspension pending an investigation, counseling and independent debriefing. And... there wasn't a replicator and... this was what was available for me in the room, Commander."

Talking, her usually raspy voice sounded that much more so in the moment. She looked up at Rita, and lightly shook her head. "And... um... no. The guard said I could go to the ship's mess hall. I... I worked on my report there and... stayed." Looking down slightly, Dox sighed lightly. "I tried to sleep in that room, but... the fixtures and materials and even the sound of the engine... it's... It's too much like... I couldn't sleep there, Commander."

Reaching over to lay her hand on the shaken woman's hand, the lost navigator's blue eyes searched those of the rescued Romulan. "Rita... in here, right now, it's Rita, okay? No Lieutenant, no Commander, no recordings... just you and me. Look, I have some idea what you've been through. I do. You melded with Sonak, then Sonak melds with me... and while he doesn't offer such things, in this case I asked, and he obliged. Because I needed to know. I needed to understand. I've never been kidnapped by the Romulans... wait..." Rita frowned slightly, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling as she checked her memory of her extensive and highly improbable career, then shook her head.

"No, not kidnapped by Romulans, at least," she said, making eye contact as she hoped that might have lightened the mood... which it hadn't. So instead, as she was wont to do, the woman nicknamed the Lost Navigator changed course.

"I'm sorry about your father."

As Rita said the words, Mnhei'sahe's stomach tightened and she tensed up for a second. In her mind's eye, she could still see him standing in front of her. She could still feel his hand on her cheek. "For a while there, I thought... Rendal had taken them all She killed him, robbed my grandmother of her mind. And when I thought that mother had been..."

The words came out as an almost stream of consciousness as Mnhei'sahe looked into those blue eyes, her own heavy and shuddering. And the more emotional she got, the thicker the remnant of her once-hidden accent seemed to get. "I wanted... I wanted to kill her. But worse. When she killed him... gave him back just to take him away... afterwards... I wanted to..."

Then, looking down in frustration, Mnhei'sahe clenched her fists and let out a muttered stream of obscenities in her native tongue, "Fvadt! Arham kreldanni kuoku... I just wanted to... to give up."

There was silence for a moment, as both women let that hang in the air, and Paris carefully considered her response. When she spoke, her voice was low and even. “I was on Vulcan when the call came in, and we immediately set out for Romulus. Would you like to know what my first and foremost concern was in that moment, and the moments moving forward? That they took your mother.”

“You, I understand. You have access to very sensitive materials and you’ve been exposed to some rather extreme circumstances and missions. The Star Empire’s interest in you wasn’t surprising. But your mother… she’s a traitor to the Star Empire. I knew they took her for leverage over you… and I was so afraid, so very afraid that they were just going to torture and murder her, to break you.” It was clear from her tone this had been weighing on Rita for some time now.

“Do you know who I wasn’t worried for? You. Because you are stronger than you know. Because you are a capable and competent officer. Because you have been shown your own strength time and again. Because I trained you, and taught you what I know of how to be an officer, and how to comport yourself. Because I knew that however hopeless it might have seemed, you knew we were coming for you, and that you hadn’t seen the last of the Hera nor her crew. Because that’s what you would have done, and you knew we would do no less.” Leaning in slightly, Paris smiled, a little piper’s smile.

“So through it all, I was not worried about you, because I believe in you. Because you are a Starfleet officer, and a darn good one.” At that Rita stood and slowly paced the room, speaking with her hands as she did so. “Yes, you are emotional, but that’s not a bad thing. Yes, you have a tendency to assume blame that is not yours, or condemn yourself unfairly- but you are getting better about that all the time. So with all due respect to your emotional fragility and your trauma over the experience, you are speaking of one of the officers under my tutelage. One whom I personally trained and prepared for the burdens of leadership and command.”

Stopping, Paris pivoted in place and directed her words not to the walls as she walked and talked, but directly to Dox herself, making significant and dramatic eye contact. “So if it isn’t too much trouble, I would appreciate it greatly if you would not refer to that officer as ‘a fucking child’ in my presence. Because she is far, far from such a thing, and I’ll not have you assault the honor of such an officer in my presence. Hm?” Ending the diatribe with a warm smile, Rita hoped it would have the desired effect.

Immediately, Mnhei'sahe's cheeks blushed green betraying her momentary embarrassment. In her fatigue, she had forgotten Rita speaking and clearly understanding Rendal as the two spoke in Rihan during the rescue mission, and would have to ask later how she had learned the language so quickly when it was appropriate. Still, the diatribe was more than a little familiar, as Dox recalled her lowest moment in the brig, after her father had been killed. That moment where she had hallucinated a somewhat similar conversation, with an imagined Rita Paris who had helped her get through the worst of it, and remind her of who she was... just as the real one did now.

“And yes, we are still very much off the record here. Just thee and me here, okay?" Paris offered a gentle smile, and her tone was reassuring, and in it Dox could hear her pride in the young officer. "You didn't give up. You held on, bided for time and did what you could with what you had where you were, and I- WE are very proud of you for that. Understand?”

The slightest of smiles cracked Mnhei'sahe's face as she nodded slightly at her commanding officer and friend. Part of her wanted to protest. To reinforce all the ways she felt her own failure. To rage at her own victimhood petulantly. But she knew better. She had spent a month not succumbing to her own weakness. She had kept her cool and calmly debated with the woman who murdered her father, sword fighting incident notwithstanding. She was here and alive and in control of her own mind because of exactly what Rita was saying and in that moment, with all of that doubt and self-recrimination going through her head, she did her best to accept it.

"Thank you. I... couldn't have gotten through this without you, Rita." Mnhei'sahe said, awkwardly not knowing quite how to reply, "Even when... you're not even there, you're good at getting me out of my own head. Which... I suppose... considering the mind meld, you saw that too?"

"Mmmm, no, no idea what you mean. But if you remembered what I've taught you and it served you... well, that's why I taught you. I'm glad I could be there for you in spirit, at least." Cocking her head a bit to the side, Rita offered one of those smiles that warmed a room. "Someday it'll be your turn, you know, and it comes sooner than you think. So I am glad to see you embracing these lessons, because you will be the one teaching them before you know it."

While she was still smiling, it was clear that Mnhei'sahe's energy was low from the lack of sleep, reaching up to rub her eyes a bit as she replied, "Well, hopefully, Starfleet will agree and allow me to continue on the Hera. Or, at least, in some capacity as an officer. But... with everything that happened... I... I don't know..."

"Don't be so dramatic," Paris replied, levering herself off the edge of the table to walk around it and sit down in her chair. "Your commission isn't suspended. Yes, you are relieved of duty until such time as you are cleared for active duty, and that will take a little time. But we're not booting you out of Starfleet for getting kidnapped by a Tal'Shiar extremist who tried to brainwash you and 'turn you to the dark side'. It may be easier and more seductive, but you are already under the tutelage of the light side, and I expect you'll choose to stay with us. After all, we offer the freedom to choose, and they do not. We offer exploration and peaceful resolution, they do not. So I'm not worried, and neither should you. Tell your story, be honest like you always are, and stand by your choices. You'll be fine, Mnhei'sahe."

Sighing, Mnhei'sahe grinned, a bit more relaxed. She knew when she chose to reclaim her original name, it was awkward for some of the crew, as Rihan words aren't always the easiest to pronounce. But she always enjoyed hearing Rita say it. "Indeed. My... lack of choices was made... abundantly clear to me with regularity during my everything. My options were just different levels of compliance. In comparison, crew rotation paperwork, repair schedules and all the minutiae of the Flight Control Department feel like... a stay on Risa."

Allowing herself to relax a bit more, Dox slumped slightly and ran her hand through her hair with a tired expression. "Even still... when I was a child, what they were offering was... it was the life I had only imagined. I used to dream about that. And I won't lie to you and tell you it was easy to keep myself focused. To deny not just them, but that little girl's voice in the back of my mind that grew up wanting that... because she didn't know any better."

"But I do know better. And I know where I want to be, Rita." Mnhei'sahe said, nodding her head with lips pursed and a bit more strength in her voice.

"Good." Nodding firmly, Paris leaned in across the table. "So... I know you're tired because staying up all night pacing and fretting can take it out of you. But what do you say we get this initial debrief out of the way, so we can get on with the business of getting you back to your life? No better therapy-" Paris paused as there was a chime at the door, and she rose, coming around the table to answer it. Taking the delivery, she came back around in sight of Dox.

"Speaking of which, just what the doctor ordered." Setting down a small bundle of neatly folded clothing on the table, on top was the bright red tunic of a Starfleet uniform, with two gold pips on the chest. Sliding them in front of the renegade Romulan, the gold-clad commander of a bygone age patted the bundle gently. "Why don't I excuse myself, so you can change into something more comfortable, hm?"

Looking down at the bundle for a moment, Mnhei'sahe's face easily betrayed her emotions as she looked down at the deep, crimson uniform. It was a luxury she had not allowed herself for the last month where she had to learn to completely mask her emotions as a constant act of self-preservation. But there was no need in the here and now, and certainly not with Rita Paris who, herself, spared a smile as she watched the women she had chosen to take under her wing smile.

The smile on Mnhei'sahe's face was tired but well earned. She brought a hand up and ran her fingers across the texture of the uniform as she took in the details. Details she feared she might never truly see again, much less wear. Them as she pursed her lips as she ran her fingers over those twin gold pips she had worked so hard to earn and nodded, "Yes. I think... I think that's well past due, Commander."

As she spoke, she used her friend and chosen sister's rank. But it was said with all the same warmth and comfort of saying the woman's name as, not deference to Rita's rank, but as an affirmation of her own. Affirmation that she was finally on her way home and back to the life she had chosen. The life she had earned.

Patting the shoulder of the complex young woman whose rescue was not something she had hoped to expect, nor a career she had ever expected to be returned to, Commander Rita Paris simply added, "Welcome back, Lieutenant."

No other words were needed, nor spoken.