Recollections and Reconsiderations

Posted on Wed Oct 30th, 2019 @ 2:16pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Petty Officer 3rd Class V'Nus Wil'I'Ams
Edited on on Thu Oct 31st, 2019 @ 10:59am

Mission: Family Detention
Location: Starfleet Command- Earth
Timeline: 2396

The first night in-between the first few briefings at Starfleet Intelligence was largely uneventful and pleasant for Lieutenant Mnhei’sahe Dox. Due to the heightened security presence that she had been assigned due to her status as an officer being in question after her month-long captivity on a Romulan warbird, she had been provided quarters on the campus in the visitor’s complex of Starfleet Command. And she wasn't quite alone.

Though she would have greatly preferred her wife, Mona Gonadie, who would be arriving the next day, the first evening was spent in the company of Commander Rita Paris and Captain Enalia Telvan and her security retinue from the Hera, Petty Officers S’Rina and V’Nus Wil’I’Ams. The group had enjoyed a massive meal at a favorite Italian restaurant of Rita’s in San Francisco proper called Paisano’s and they talked about their experiences so far as the three officers that Starfleet wanted to talk to the most.

The Captain and Rita were in for a few days of questions, but Dox’s schedule was filled for the next two weeks at Starfleet Intelligence while virtually everyone in command wanted to ensure she hadn’t been compromised and wasn’t now a Romulan spy. So that meant that after dinner on that first night, Rita and Enalia went to their own assigned quarters early to prepare for the day ahead. And while it was suggested that Dox do the same, sleep wasn't coming for the anxious officer.

While the circumstances were stressful enough, it was another night without her wife and a night on Earth. Sitting awake, staring at the ceiling of her assigned quarters, the silence was deafening. Mnhei'sahe Dox was a spacer. Born and raised on ships, she found that she had a hard time sleeping without the hum of an engine below the deck plates. So that ever-present vibration being missing and there was no soothing thrum from her avian bond-mate to replace it, which meant sleep eluded her.

Getting up and looking at the chronometer on the wall panel, it was only oh Eleven forty-five hours and Dox was restless. So she tossed her uniform back on and decided to get out for a while. Which, of course, meant getting past her security. Not in the literal sense, of course. She wasn't a teenager slipping out anymore, but she also knew that her activities were being heavily monitored by Starfleet while she was there, so it wouldn't be prudent to try and ditch the sisters. And frankly, she liked them and didn't mind the company.

Stepping into the corridor of the 14th floor of the visitors complex, there stood Petty Officer V'Nus Wil'I'ams, at attention as always. The sisters had been assigned the adjoining chamber and, while there was a connecting door between the two, Dox knew at least one of them would be on guard.

"Lieutenant. Is all well?" The tall, lean Klingon security officer in gold said with a raised eyebrow, as Dox stepped out.

"Well enough, Miss Wil'I'ams. I'm simply looking to get out of here for a bit. Go walking. Get a cup of coffee. I'm fairly sure I'll be safe at Starfleet Command headquarters, so you can take a break if you'd like." Dox said, making the offer knowing full well the answer that was forthcoming.

"Absolutely not, Lieutenant. Our orders were explicit from Commander Paris. You are not to be unescorted during your tenure here. However…" V'Nus said with the slightest hint of a smirk, "The Commander anticipated you would wish to engage in such activities after hours. We are authorized to take turns in such eventualities. My sister is sleeping, so I shall escort you wherever you wish to go."

Rolling her eyes slightly, Dox smiled and nodded. "Of course she did. Well, look, I understand you need to do your duty and follow orders, and I don’t want to drag you all over the campus, but I really need to get out of here for a little while. So, thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary, Lieutenant. If my duty is to protect you, then I shall carry out that duty no matter the obstacles or threats.” V’Nus replied with all the verve and passion one would expect from a Starfleet trained Klingon warrior woman.

To which Dox simply smiled and lead the way down the corridor to the lift to the ground floor. “Well, In this case, the obstacles might not be anything more intense than gentle inclines on the walking paths. But if it’s not in here, it’s preferable to me.”

“Very well then. Death to gentle inclines, Lieutenant!” The much taller Petty Officer called out louder than was necessary with the slightest hint of knowing she was being ironic and actually making a joke, to which Dox simply chuckled.

---------------------

It was a cool, breezy night as salty air drifted in from across the bay as Dox and V’Nus made their way across the campus under the bright moonlight, largely in silence. By the edge of an observation platform overlooking the bay, Dox stopped and leaned over the railing to take in the view, doing her best to try and see Rita Paris’ hometown through those eyes rather than the veil of bitterness that she had maintained for years regarding Earth. Standing alertly nearby but not so close as to be intrusive, V’Nus suspiciously eyed a young yeoman walking past that looked ready to pee himself at her threatening glare.

Without even turning to see the exchange, Dox smiled lightly. She knew the Klingon woman well enough. Since she and her sister came aboard the Hera, Dox had been a part of her training. She regularly assisted Rita in combat and hand-to-hand training with the security team, teaching them the Rihannsu martial art of Llaekh-ae'rl and helping both sisters learn to measure their notorious, Klingon tempers. The three women had come to develop sincere respect for each other, and Dox genuinely liked them both. They were a microcosm of the Federation’s charter: People whose respective races would have marked them as enemies becoming friends through the mission of Starfleet.

Of the two sisters, however, V’Nus was the more thoughtful. The more prone to notoriously un-Klingon levels of introspection and self-analysis. As such, she was also more prone to use her words where her sister, S’Rina, was more likely to just punch something. So, as they stood in silence, V’Nus raised an eyebrow and spoke. “Lieutenant, permission to speak freely.”

Turning and leaning back against the railing, Dox nodded with a smile. “Please. I'm off duty. What’s on your mind, Miss Wil’I’Ams?”

Not relaxing her posture in the slightest, V’Nus looked at the much shorter, red-headed Romulan woman with a curious expression. “You seem both stressed and overly preoccupied. You will, doubtless, succeed in reaffirming yourself here. But there is a gymnasium nearby if you wished to spar.”

Chuckling lightly, Dox nodded. “You are very correct. I am, indeed, stressed and preoccupied. And, truth be told, I would love to take you up on that offer. In fact, if my career is intact when this is all over and we’re back home, then that will be a wonderful release. But for now, no. It wouldn’t be… wise.”

“I’m being watched somewhat closely during all of this and I suspect my venting my frustrations violently would be viewed… unsympathetically. Especially considering my academic record here.” Dox added with a smirk and a slight blush that was all but invisible in the moonlight.

But V’Nus picked up on the shift in tone, and took the initiative to press further with a hint of genuinely deep curiosity that Dox noticed. “Your academic record is… violent? While that’s not uncommon in those of us that pursue security, it is… less so for commissioned officers. Is it not?”

Looking over across the shore, the lights of Starfleet Academy twinkled. Dox leaned back over the railing and sighed. “The Academy is generally a four-year program, even for officers. It took me five. Though I doubt this is all that enthralling to you. It’s late, we can just head back.”

“On the contrary, I find this quite... interesting, Lieutenant,” V’Nus added as she stepped a little closer. “Unless you do not wish to do so, I would like to hear more. My sister and I chose the enlisted path rather than go to the academy and try to become officers. In part, this was to appease my Sister’s… impatience. But I will admit that I am… curious of the path we didn’t take.”

It was an honest and revealing comment from the generally reserved, Klingon woman that caught Dox just a bit off guard. Of the two, V’Nus was much more thoughtful, by and large, but the Rihannsu Lieutenant wasn’t expecting anything like this. However, Dox felt a little guilty dragging the woman across the campus to placate her own insomnia, so she nodded and replied. “Very well.”

“It was… three years in at the academy and things were not going well. I mean, academically things were going fine, but on a personal level, I was miserable. I may have wanted to escape being a smuggler and get away from my mother, but it didn't take me long to learn how much I didn't like being stuck on any one planet. It was Starfleet that got me off that smuggling ship and gave me a chance at a life I could choose for myself, so that's where I wanted to be. That was the only life path that seemed like an option.” There was a slightly melancholy tone to Dox’s words there, and clearly, things she wasn’t saying, but V’Nus didn’t press the point and simply listened.

“But I was also still very angry about… well… everything. I didn't look like this then. I was still… well, thanks to what my parents had done to me when I was young, I looked more human than Rihannsu, so it usually took some kind of prodding for that to get out. In high school, it was my accent. I knew English, but barely ever really spoke it growing up so it took years to train myself out of a Rihan accent.” Then Dox looked over to V’Nus for the expected expression and smiled lightly. “Yes, I know it’s been coming back. I’m… working on it.”

“I had not said anything…” The tall Klingon woman commented dryly. “but… I had noticed.”

Looking back with a raised eyebrow and a chuckle, Dox continued. “Well, in high school, it forced questions and I was always looking for a fight back then. So I answered any questions from that position and tended to get what I was looking for.”

“But it got… lonely fast. So, as soon as I could qualify, I joined the academy. Starfleet was supposed to be all about inclusion and togetherness in all the speeches and history lessons, so I hoped things would be different. But it didn't take long to learn that it didn't matter where I was... once it got out that I was ‘Romulan’, everything changed. After high school, I taught myself to try and hide it as much as possible. It worked for a little while. It's not like one's medical records are public knowledge, after all.”

“I got outed in a xenobiology lecture where the professor used me as an… example… of how otherwise incompatible species could procreate. Back then, I didn’t even know that that was a lie. That I wasn’t even really half-human. Regardless, at the time it was… mortifying. Before that, I kept to myself for the most part, but that was by my choice. Afterwards, not so much. My roommate stopped talking to me entirely. Her father was killed by Romulans on the Amargosa observatory and… well… it was a lot of that sort of thing for a while.”

“Near the end of the year, I was just desperate to make connections with anyone. I was… it made me fairly stupid. There was this one human man, and out of nowhere he started being nice to me. Didn't seem to care about my being Rihannsu. He was nice enough, I suppose. Or at least he seemed to be. And I was so lonely I think it could be noticed from orbit. He certainly picked up on it.” At that comment, V’Nus seemed particularly perplexed with Dox being married to a female Miradonian, so Dox paused for a bit of exposition.

“Back then I was still in denial about a lot of things, really. I tried to pretend to not be Rihannsu and I also tried to pretend I wasn't a lesbian. So, I convinced myself that he was what I wanted. Desperation and denial are terrible bedfellows, after all.”

“He was fairly popular. Head of the class in tactical training. And he… liked me. I was just flying without a starship. So, one night, we went off campus on leave. I still… well… I knew people from when I was still smuggling with my mother and had a bad habit of… keeping up those connections. I could get my hands on fairly decent Kali-fal or lehe'jhme wine, and we put back a lot of it that night. I had been… reluctant… to take things with him too far. He… eventually, he talked me into it. He said so many wonderful things. He made me feel alive and… loved. And I wanted to believe it so bad. It was my first time and it was… well… up until that point.” Dox was straight up blushing at the story, barely believing she was telling it. The only person she had ever told this to on the Hera was Mona, and it was not exactly the ‘officer’ thing to do, admitting to such things.

“Anyway, after we… well… afterward, things changed. He just… cut me off completely. Stopped responding to my messages. Didn't even look at me in classes except to occasionally snicker with his friends when he saw me. I was destroyed. Almost dropped out. I had no idea what happened and assumed that I screwed something up. Or that I disgusted him. I was a short, pudgy 'Romulan' girl, after all. Then, he started seeing another student. A particularly shy girl from Bolarus IX. I watched, and he did the same things to her as he had done to me. Treated her wonderfully and she fell for him hard.”

“It took a little digging, since people were not very open to talk to me in general, but I found out about three other girls he had done this to. A Tyrellian, a Caitian, and a Arcturian. I found out he had a list. A list of alien girls to... conquer... and we were all boxes he could check off. I was furious. I tried to warn the Bolarian girl, but she wouldn't believe me. I… confronted him in front of half the class on the quad and he called me a jealous, Romulan slut. A liar from a race of liars. All of which I could deal with... until he put his hands on me. He... ended up in the infirmary with seven broken ribs, a broken hand, a crushed windpipe, and a burst liver. I ended up almost getting kicked out after a disciplinary hearing but got cleared after six months and was able to resume my studies. Eventually, and only after some of the other women came forward and made him look worse than I did by default, especially when it was revealed that he tended to like slipping drugs into his dates drinks to make it easier for him to seduce them. The whole thing put my time in the academy on hold for two semesters and I had to make up the time lost.”

As the specifics of the story ended, Dox stood back up and straightened her uniform top. “And that was just one of my more interesting encounters in the academy. And not the only one that got me put on academic suspension. But, suffice it to say, learning to control my temper was, and continues to be, a bit of a problem for me.”

Taking it all in, V’Nus snorted slightly. “I can imagine. I likely would have simply killed this man had he even attempted something similar. S’Rina… S’Rina would be in a very dark prison indeed had it been her.”

“The point being, I’m being judged not just on their fear that I’ve been compromised by my time on that Warbird, but also on a very long history of barely making it through the academy due to a violent streak that it’s taken me considerable effort to control, Miss Wil’I’Ams.” Dox continued, folding her arms behind her back. "But I'm still here."

“Now, I have a considerable amount of hurdles I need to leap to earn these pips back. But some of them are hurdles I put up for myself. Acting on my anger would be easier. Telling these admirals to go to Areinnye would feel good, but leave me without a career. And it turns out I like my career. I like the good we do on the Hera.”

“What about you, Miss Wil’I’Ams?” Dox asked with an inquisitive tone and a raised eyebrow.

“Lieutenant? I do not… understand the question.” The Klingon woman asked, her eyebrow cricked slightly.

“You mentioned that you and your sister chose the enlisted path because it was faster. Is that still what you want?” It was late and the story had been Dox’s to tell, but she had reasons for sharing and had been paying attention herself. Something V’Nus was slightly unprepared for. “Are you happy as a Petty Officer or are you beginning to feel like you might want more?”

Unprepared for the question, V’Nus actually seemed a little nervous, which was considerably surprising for her as she began to attempt to answer, “My sister felt…”

But Dox stopped her mid-sentence by raising a finger, “Not S’Rina… YOU. I’m curious as to what you want. No pressure. This isn’t an official review. I just noticed the tone in your voice shifted when you mentioned it earlier. And I know a thing or two about wanting more out of life that the lot I’ve been handed. If you’d rather not discuss it, that’s perfectly fine. We can walk back quietly and enjoy the evening as it is. But if you want to talk about it, I am willing to not just be your superior officer.”

There was a moment of silence between the women as the much taller Klingon looked down at the short, stout Romulan she inexplicably respected and had grown to actually like through their occasional sparring, usually peppered with conversation. When she finally replied, it was characteristically simple. “I believe I require more than the confines of my current station allow. I have… considered… applying to become an officer. I feel I can do more in such a capacity. But I fear that as a Klingon, I do not have the… temperament for such a role.”

“I won’t repeat anything that you already know, Miss Wil’I’Ams. You know that there are Klingon Starfleet officers and have been for years. Command level officers, even. And you also know that having an aggressive temper isn’t some uncontrollable beast to be leveraged as an excuse.” Dox said, starting to walk back across the campus as V’Nus followed. “I mean, I didn’t just tell you about my extremely embarrassing, ill-conceived Academy tryst for no reason.”

“Lieutenant?” The petty officer said with a hanging question.

“Yes, I was venting, to a degree. I trust you well enough and consider you a friend and so felt it was acceptable to do so. But there was more than that behind what I told you what I did.” Dox’s pace was casual and calm. She wasn’t trying to be Rita Paris in that moment, but she was trying to be helpful. “I had a feeling that you needed to hear that story. Because I suspected we’d be having this conversation now. And that it might do you good to know that officers have violent tempers too. And that Starfleet doesn’t automatically deny you your potential because of it. I had councilors and teachers that did care enough to help me work through my issues at the academy. And now I have family and good friends to help me. Sometimes, those friends let me punch them when I need to really let it out as well. And it’s taken me years and, as you well know, it’s something I still struggle with. But it’s simply a challenge. An obstacle to be overcome.” Then she smiled as they continued walking up the hill to the complex. “And over time, what starts as a mountain, becomes more like a... gentle incline.”

Pausing for a moment, Dox stopped under a tree and turned to her security escort. “Being a Klingon doesn’t make you too violent to be an officer any more than my being ‘Romulan’ makes me a liar or a spy. We define who and what we are, Miss Wil’I’Ams. And what you are is a woman with many of the qualities that define being a good officer. Chief among them, you cared to ask if I was okay?”

Turning, Dox continued walking and V’Nus followed, commenting, “There are… other factors that might complicate things. Family issues.” As she spoke, she immediately locked down and stopped talking, having said more than she intended to at the moment.

Picking up on it, Dox leaned over and nodded. “Indeed. I don’t know what your family problems are, Miss Wil’I’Ams, nor is it a concern of mine, because we are not our families. I’m not here fighting for my career because my Mother AND Father were Tal’Shiar agents. I’m not here because my grandmother was once a section director for the Tal’Shiar. I’m being judged on my conduct and behavior. And if that behavior is determined to be appropriate, then I will return to the Hera with my rank intact in spite of my family history and connections.”

As they returned to the complex, Dox stopped again while still outside and far enough from any prying ears. “I’m not your section chief, Commander Paris is. My role in the security department is a consulting one. However, if you wish to re-evaluate your career and begin looking into the officer program, I would absolutely put my recommendation behind you, Miss Wil’I’Ams. You would make a fine officer and I suspect that Commander Paris would agree. Just food for thought.”

Turning to look down the campus at the headquarters of Starfleet Command on the edge of the mall, V’Nus harumphed slightly and grinned, “Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your time and your… ear. I will consider your words.”

"No thanks are necessary, Miss Wil'I'Ams. If I could help, then I'm glad for it."

Nothing more needed to be said as Dox gave an approving nod and the two women went back inside. And while her mind was still a mess of concerns and questions about her own future, the red-headed Rihannsu woman felt a little bit better for having gotten out of her own head, if only for a brief time. And sleep finally came a little easier.