The Ghosts of Chosen Family

Posted on Mon Apr 13th, 2020 @ 9:43am by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Fri Apr 17th, 2020 @ 10:50am

Mission: Born and Reborn
Location: Miradon
Timeline: 2397

In the rounded, stone-walled chamber in the Aerie on Mona Gonadie’s home-planet of Miradon, the new family slept. In the center of the large, circular padded nest in the far end of the recovery room, Mnhei’sahe Dox was in a deep sleep, With one arm around her bond-mate, Mona, the two new mothers slept in a semi-circle as, in the center of the nest, their three newborn daughters slept.

The wide nest was designed specifically with cradle-like indentations for the three girls, Amihan, Tal and Hlai’Vana, with a sort of intended rig around them for the parents to sleep safely, but still close enough to touch. And all three were touching as the lavender light of the planets moons streamed in the windows.

Just outside the room, the entourage from the Hera took turns sleeping, with Petty Officer Liu currently guarding the main chamber and the others taking up different positions throughout the area. But in the recovery room, the new family was alone and there were no sounds to be heard, other than the wind gently blowing across them as they slept.

But still, Mnhei’sahe stirred. Slowly, her eyes opened as if she heard a voice. A familiar voice calling her name from a great distance, faint and barely there. Gently, the young Romulan pilot pulled her arm from where it rested just behind Mona’s back as she scooched off the edge of the nest. The stone floor was cold against her bare feet as she groggily got up. And again, she could swear she had heard her name.

“Mother?” She whispered ever so faintly as she raised an eyebrow and looked towards the door to the antechamber where the others were staying for the night. Bright light shone in from under the crack of the old, wooden door. Grabbing the light green robe she had brought with her, the red-headed Romulan wrapped it around her as she looked back down at Mona and their children with a smile, and again came the faint voice. “Mother, is that you? What’s wrong?”

As quietly as she could, she stepped across the cold, stone floor as she went to the door. The light coming from under the door seemed as bright as daylight even though it was still night, as she gently and slowly turned the old, metal latch and opened the door just enough to slip out and close it behind her quickly, not wanting to disturb Mona and the children.

Wincing on the other side, it was impossibly bright and with sleep still in her eyes, she raised an arm to cover her face as her eyes quickly adjusted to the light. But what she saw, wasn’t the ancient stone antechamber where her friends and family were staying. Her arm in front of her face wasn’t draped in thin, green silk anymore, but in the crimson sleeve of her Starfleet uniform. Her feet weren’t bare on cold stone, but warm in her boots. And what should have been an old Miradonian room looked completely different, but also extremely familiar.

The light streamed in through the greenhouse-style windows across from her where she could see a well-tended garden outside. And beyond the garden, a small lake with rolling hills on the other side. Blinking in disbelief, she looked around as her eyes adjusted. She was standing in a kitchen. A large 'chopping block' table surrounded by six sturdy clearly handmade chairs was the centerpiece of the kitchen and on the walls on either side were framed photos, holographic displays, models of Starships and a blue Starfleet uniform on a curvacious mannequin form from the same era as Rita Paris’ uniforms.

Stepping slightly forward, Mnhei’sahe turned around for a moment, and the old wooden door was different now, but she knew it all the same. She had stood in this room only once before, but the details of it were burned into her mind. And as she looked at that door that she didn’t want to open, for fear of what she might see inside, she suddenly felt like she wasn’t alone in the familiar room that she now remembered to be in Glenlochy, Scotland on Earth. Light years away from where she was just a moment earlier.

Her mind raced for a moment that it had to be a dream, but in all her life, she had never experienced a dream as vivid or as real as this. No dream where she could so distinctly feel the cold stone of the floor. No dream where light pierced her eyes so, or felts so warm on her already warm, Romulan skin. Whatever this was, it was more than a dream. At least a normal dream. Turning slightly, she spoke softly, the name of the woman she had met in this room some five months ago shortly after her abduction by the Tal’Shiar.

The woman, who in a single day, had made herself a part of the young Romulan officer’s heart. “Char?”

"Oh, this won't do at all," came a voice that was perhaps familiar, but not quite as she remembered it.

"Not the end of the story, but perhaps more in the middle," came the voice from behind the redheaded Romulan. As Dox turned, she was no longer in that quint country cottage, but on the dark bridge of a Starfleet vessel, of another era. The bridge sounds were loud, the decor was dark blues and black monitors, and there in the center chair, a cloud of holographic screens hovering about her, was the Romulan Starfleet admiral whose death Dox had attended. But this was not the old woman on her last day on Earth, but the woman in her prime- skin unlined and smooth, figure rather impressively abundant, even in the maroon duty jacket over a white turtleneck, with a black leather skirt and black knee boots.

It was the era of Admiral Kirk, the beginning of the uniforms that would be worn by Starfleet for the next 70 years. The bridge, Dox recognized from her studies, was a refit Constitution-class, circa 2293. Although those holodisplays were not in use on modern starships- clearly a customized element of the Captain's chair. Looking out from beneath those sharp brows, those violet eyes were sharp and quick. A close mouth smile graced the left side of the woman's lips, as an eyebrow rose on the same side. It made her look as though she were smirking, which her head tilt of curiosity just emphasized.

"Hello, Mnhei'sahe. How's life?" asked the dead woman.

The woman Mnhei'sahe had met those 5 months past was decades older, a woman of closer to two hundred years.  But this was Captain Charybdis MacGregor, born Scylla Charvanek, as Mnhei'sahe had only seen in the holos on the wall of her cottage, and in their all-too-brief journey to the elder Romulan woman's past. Pausing for just a moment to take in the utter unreality of what she was seeing, as vivid as any holodeck recreation she had ever entered, the younger woman who now only looked a little younger comparatively looked at the woman in the command chair and replied, anxiety in her voice, "Life? Right now, life is... life is very good."

"Congratulations are in order, are they not? Triplets... your wife must be insanely relieved to be free of such a burden. I bore twins twice, but triplets... I shudder to imagine." The seemingly bemused woman in the captain's chair idly checked a few of the displays as she spoke, her mind keeping up with a few tasks at once, even here in this limbo between worlds accessed by a dream. A creature of habit she was, and obsessive in her pursuit of the details in the aesthetic.

Stepping slightly towards the side of the chair, somewhat hesitant to approach as she still didn't quite understand what was happening, Dox nodded but still allowed a light smile to crease her cheek at the question from her friend. "Thank you. And yes, she's... quite relieved. Emotionally and literally, of course."

"What's happening, here, Char? This... this isn't just a dream. I'd know. I'd feel it." The young pilot said, trusting her intuition and feelings, to say nothing of the training of her mental discipline with Sonak. But as she spoke, she took a moment to listen to those feelings and felt another, more familiar, presence. A presence she felt when Char was about to pass on those long months ago. "This is... really you, isn't it?" 

"This," the Chesshire Captain grinned, gesturing about her, to the memory of a starship long since gone which now surrounded them, "is courtesy of one of your 'friends in high places'. She visited me the same day as you and Liviana, and I still had some... misconceptions to clear up with you, I realized. An aevhhl aehallh... a restless ghost, with business still amongst the living. So I asked him to let me take a moment with you, and he chose the where and when. Death, it seems, is willing to oblige the occasional polite ghost."

"All in all, she's actually quite nice." Dox said with the lightest of smiles, her feelings proven correct, "Though she does seem to prefer the late-night visits. At least she didn't send her horse, Taxes, to wake me up. That's... an unusual way to wake up, having a ghost horse breathing on you impatiently."

Chuckling slightly at the unorthodox memory, Dox began to relax as she ran a hand across the edge of the helm console, amazed at how real everything felt to her. "So, this was your ship, right? The Victory? Why are we here to talk about whatever it is you needed to say?"

"Ohhh... because this right here," Char stretched in the command chair, an act very clearly one she remembered well. "This was my favorite place. I wasn't here for that long, really- I captained her for only eight years. But they were eight of the best years of my life, and simultaneously the worst. But that's the way of things, isn't it? Always with the best of times, you get the worst of times as well. But here... this was all I'd ever wanted, and I got it. She was a marvel a beauty, tougher than duranium and faster than most ships in the fleet. You'd be surprised at what is standard now, that wasn't so standard back in my day. A lot of that innovation came from Montgomery Scott... but my Chief Weaver definitely made some very critical changes to a lot of warp theory and application."

"This old girl, though..." the captain of a century ago patted the armrest with genuine fondness, the love she felt for her starship plainly evident upon her face. "I was in command when she rolled out of Utopia Planitia, and I beamed out when she was in her death throes, only because Carlow and T'vyn intervened. I'd have gone down with her, if they'd let me. She was my only command posting, and I even named her." The buxom beauty was clearly lost in reverie for a few seconds, then she refocused on the moment. "But, I have an eternity to relive old memories. You still have a life to get to, so I suppose I should get to the point, shouldn't I?"

Looking up from the helm, Dox smiled and nodded. "I truthfully don't mind. I... like to hear the stories. But I am more than a little curious as to just what you wanted to talk to me about."

"Do you know why I gave you that sword, Mnhei'sahe?"

Immediately, Dox's stomach tightened as she thought of it. The sword of S'task, forged by the Vulcan swordsmith S'harien in the ways of the old Vulcan smiths before the time of the sundering. Taken from the senate chamber on Romulus in a timeline that no longer existed, it had been rendered little more than a temporal copy, but it still represented so much to the young Romulan pilot. "You... called it a gift. From one generation to the next. You said that it didn't obligate me to anything."

Looking out the memory of the Victory's viewscreen towards the dream of the final frontier in Charybdis's mind, Dox pursed her lips a moment as she thought. "You said... you said I understood what it represented. That I was... the future."

The words reverberated in her head: 'the future'. Her grandmother had caller her the same things, and if Char knew it or not, she took up a very similar place in the young Romulan woman's mind and heart.

"I did. Because in the linear march of time, you are moving into the future, while I no longer do so. Ergo, you are the future." In this moment, the bit of her that had pretended to be Vulcan all those years was clear as Dox smirked a bit at the performance. "Once I passed the veil, I learned... so many are pulling you in so many directions. Which in turn reminded me I didn't teach you the most important lesson I learned in my life."

"Which is?" the younger, and decidedly still-alive Romulan woman said, with genuine interest as she stood a bit more erect and attentively.

"Do it your own way," the sharp-browed commander leaned in as she spoke, to emphasize her point. The uniform really wasn't flattering on her, and in that moment Dox realized this particular uniform wouldn't have flattered Rita much either. "Choose your own path, and stick by your choices. Be flexible, yes, but you owe none of these forces in your life- the ghost of the last generation, the Senator who wants a successor, the Starfleet officer who wants to pass on traditions, the Pirate empress who wants someone with empathy by her side. Death himself- yes, I know he's listening, but he granted the audience, I'll speak honestly. The dead have no need for subterfuge nor subtlety, after all."

"All of them want their dreams for you, and like a dutiful daughter seeking approval from her mother, you scramble to try to make them all happy. More and more to the detriment of your own happiness. I see you stalling things with the Artan doctor who refuses to believe she's in command. You're just spinning plates on poles and you know it, trying to keep everyone happy while you stall to figure out what you want."

"But here, tonight- it's clear, isn't it?" Charybdis leaned back in her chair and smirked again. "I came all the way from the afterlife to tell you to make your own fvadt self happy, and you've already figured it out this very night?!?"

"It's clearer, Char." Mnhei'sahe said honestly, with a nod. "I'd be lying if I said it was completely clear. And I'd be lying if I said you were wrong. I..."

"I do want that approval, I suppose. Sometimes, I legitimately crave it." she continued, tracing a hand across the back of the chair to the helm position she was standing by as much out of habit as it was right in front of the Captain's chair. It was much closer than it was on the Hera's bridge- two stride. She could see the logic in the captain being able to step in and man any position quickly, thus one of the driving concepts of the circular bridge plan. Along with putting the Captain at center, where all reports would be easily heard. "With Enalia and Rita, who seem very at odds with what they expect from me, but both also clearly having expectations. With my Mother, who is legitimately trying to make things right between us. With Rei, who tells me that the choice is mine while putting me in situations where my sense of responsibility tells me I have no choice."

As that last bit, Mnhei'sahe looked up with an awkward grin, knowing full well that Rei was listening and that the revelation was hardly all that surprising among the two of them. But the moment was also a way of stalling, and Char knew it as she raised an eyebrow towards the next generation, waiting for the rest. Taking a breath, Mnhei'sahe stiffened ever so slightly as she let the rest out.

"And... the senator. My grandmother." Mnhei'sahe shook her head as she thought of it. "I mind-melded with her. I know that in her mind, she genuinely and sincerely believes that what she wants for me is what she thinks is best. And it would be the easiest to just turn my back on that and on her. She's on a planet that legally I just can't go visit any time I want, even now with all the strings she's pulling to try and make it possible. I could just stop replying. Let someone else take over as her representative. But I don't."

"Even now, with three very strong reasons to focus on them and our lives... I'm still feeling pulled." She admitted, shaking her head. "Feeling pulled to do what I think is right, yes. To do everything that I CAN do. But... you're right. I am doing this, ultimately, because I want that approval. I want that home that was denied to me. I want a grandmother to be proud of me. I want what I never had growing up, and knowing that it's suddenly possible... suddenly no longer just a child's dream... makes it that much stronger a pull."

"If I may, let me offer what I learned... and perhaps what I came back to impart, who knows.," the cheerful woman grinned, and it was a predatory expression that Mnhei'sahe had seen on the face of Enalia Telvan more than once. "My own children... were very precocious, and they grew up very, very quickly, thanks to my own genetic tampering that passed itself on to them... all f them, and even my further descendants, according to Liviana."

"But from Fiona and Raibert, while Qurka Qurg was a kind, patient and loving governess, and their father was there for them... they missed me, during those early years. And the middle years, and most of their childhood, really. I was off busy battling the Romulan infiltrations, trying to save the Federation and stabilize the galaxy, then deal with the fallout and stabilize Starfleet, all while dealing with all of my losses. Which in turn made me distance myself from the very ones I was fighting so hard to ensure their future." That smile had faded, and now the curious captain's face wore an expression of profound regret.

"I could have been there for them, let the universe turn, let others tilt at those windmills. But I didn't," Charybdis MacGregor, the coming storm, the one the Tal-Shiar had named Kholhr Saidere, the 'vengeful invention' shook her head, here in her prime in her seat of command. "In the end, neither of them were very... warm... people. I never truly repaired my relationship with my firstborn, and even making up for it with the children who came later only caused them to resent me more. Even Raine said it was hard on him, watching the kids grow up, and trying to manage it without me. So... perhaps that's part of my message as well. Focus on what's important. Fight for the future, yes- but be there for them, because they need you, all four of them."

At that moment, Mnhe'sahe's thoughts went to her own mother. Who raised her to be a pilot and a fighter and a warrior, but forgot to let her be a child. Who chose to be a commander rather than a mother. As that went through her mind, she fingered the pips on her chest of the uniform she was wearing in her mind in this dreamscape and what that meant. What that represented. Then, her mind returned to the children, back out there where somewhere, her sleeping body was holding them and Mona tightly.

"We've... fought, perhaps more than we have done anything else, until recently," she said, a tremble in her voice. "I hated her for everything about my childhood. And I hated myself for still wanting her to love me the way I wanted to be loved. Now... it's... nice. It's nice now that she's changed for the better. That she's been here with me and made such a concerted effort to be better than she had been for so many years."

"But, she left my father when she had to choose between her career and life with him. Then she left the world where I was born, all in search of more. And while she dragged me along with her, she also left me very alone." The tremble got deeper in her already raspy voice. "I... I can't do that. I can't be for them what she was for me and hope they'll forgive me when it's too late."

Sitting in the chair at the helm she had been standing by, Mnhei'sahe's shoulders sank, feeling so much heavier in that moment. "How do I do it, Char? How am I supposed to do everything? Be their mother? Mona's wife? An officer? Everything? How do I decide to focus on what's important... what I want and just... pretend that I don't have other responsibilities as well?"

"Prioritize. Number one, stay alive. never forget that one, because if you're dead you have no priorities. Well, next to none, it would seem," Charybdis amended, given her current undead state. "Number two, your mate, Number three, your family. Number four, the job. It took me years to figure that out. Now, what the job entails- that, you have to figure out for yourself. But all of these people who want you to lead their lives are NOT you. Don't live for them."

"I gave you the Sword of S'Task not to be a responsibility, but a reminder," the Romulan super soldier in her prime explained. "Keep it safe, yes, because it is precious. But it was never meant to make you feel this crushing weight of responsibility. On the contrary, it was to remind you that all that grand and glorious cosmic adventuring can turn to dust. What really matters is family, friends, and the lives that you touch. That was most definitely on my list of wisdoms to impart from the wings of Al'thindor."

Taking the advice in, Mnhei'sahe sat there for a moment. Sitting there, listening to the hum of the fantasy engine and the rhythmic beeps of the phantom consoles around her, a thought dug its way from the back of her mind. "You said... it took you years to figure it out. When you did... when you were back in Glenlochy, on Earth. In your cottage, were you eventually... happy?  More or less?"

"Probably the happiest I was my entire life. Liviana..." The buxom woman inhaled deeply, then sighed. "She just didn't understand that home and hearth, tinkering with my inventions and keeping up with the kids and grandkids was more important to me than anything else. I was a Romulan with a projected lifespan of double my husband's. How would it have honored him for me to take leadership of his clan that has stood for a millennium? No, ceding the house and lands were an easy choice. Glory and titles... those aren't what you remember at the ends of the day."

"My own mother, Liviana, was a hero of our people, brave and bold and true. Her fortunes rose and fell more than once, and she dedicated her life to serving the Star Empire. I am proud of her, and her service. Yet when I think back to that little girl who cried herself to sleep at night, wishing her hero mother would come rescue her from the awful and overwhelming life she was thrust into..." Charybdis shook her head sadly. "I forgot that lesson with my own children, and I did the exact same thing... and missed out on their entire childhoods. They grew up resenting Starfleet, because that's what took their mosar... their mama away from them."

"All they got from me was the lullaby I remember my own mother singing to me, which I sang to them in the womb," Char explained, then wound her hand as she realized that, like many of her stories, the explanation required an explanation. "I was telepathic when I was pregnant with the firstborns, and they were too, so... well. Don't let 'Flaihh Arhva' be your only contribution to their childhoods, hm?"

Raising an eyebrow, Mnhei'sahe tilted her head slightly. While she knew that 'Flaihh Arhva' meant 'Remember me' in Federation standard, the song was unknown to her. "Uh... My mother... she was never one for lullabyes. I don't... I don't know that."

There was a bit of embarrassment in her voice as she admitted that she didn't know.

"Then let this be a gift that may actually serve you better than that sword you keep hidden in your closet," Charybdis offered with a smile. "It's a song of being apart, and wishing you could be there... it's why my mother favored it." Inhaling, when she opened her mouth, a surprisingly clear and soft voice issued forth, as she gently sang the words of the Romulan lullaby.

Remember me
Though I have to say goodbye
Remember me
Don't let it make you cry
For ever if I'm far away
I hold you in my heart
I sing a secret song to you
Each night we are apart
Remember me
Though I have to travel far
Remember me
Each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I'm with you
The only way that I can be
Until you're in my arms again
Remember me

When she'd finished, the violet-eyed vixen had tears in her eyes, and her smile was one that was wresting with emotion as she did so. "I think... maybe that was why I needed one more stolen moment with you, child. Because my mother was never there, and I was never there... all we left for our children was a lullaby to comfort them. I had to leave you too... so now I leave you this. To remember me."

"Remember the life I led, and the mistakes I made, and my choices. Then do what's right for you and that feathered wife of yours and those three adorable little chicks who will be warbirds before you know it. You owe none of us anything, Mnhei'sahe. This was your life- now it is their lives. No greater responsibility to the galaxy than being a good and present parent for your children... because they ARE the future." Wearing a sad smile, Captain Charybdis MacGregor of the USS Victory, the ghost of a woman on the ghost of a starship, reached out from the past to help guide the future, by reaching out her hand to Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox.

Standing there, tears had welled up in Mnhei'sahe's eyes as well, her arms stiff and trembling in that moment, realizing that her time with this woman who she had only known for a day, but who meant so much to her, was nearing its end. 

Thinking about everything she had just heard, and every lesson she had just been imparted, the young Romulan woman followed her heart and stepped in past the offered hand, putting her arms around Charybdis and pulling her into a hug, as the tears broke free. With a cracking voice, Mnhei'sahe whispered, "I will. I will never forget. I swear to you, I will always remember you."

"Then truly I am blessed with immortality. For what greater reward than to be remembered?" Charybdis whispered back, and through the tears as she held Mnehi'sahe tightly, the bridge of the ancient starship, and the ghost of the heroine whose deeds would never be known, both became the mist and haze of awakening. Thus Mnhei'sahe found herself back in the nest on Miradon, as if the visitation had never occurred. 

But the fresh tears in her eyes, and the sensation of warmth she felt in her heart reminded her that it had. Looking over, with her arm still draped protectively over the chicks as she drew her wife closer to her, she bit her bottom lip and wiped her eyes with a sniffle. As she did so, almost in unison, the three girls slowly opened their big, soft eyes to look over at her.

Gently, Mnhei'sahe looked down at them with a smile stretched across her face. With one arm, she held her sleeping bond-mate, who was trilling gently in the soft moonlight. With her other hand, she began stroking the chick's cheeks one at a time as she whispered softly to them, "Shhh. It's okay. I'm okay. Just go back to sleep, shhh."

As she looked down at the big, copper-colored eyes of Amihan, Tala and Hlai'vana, she couldn't help but smile as she stroked their cheeks, and realized that Charybdis was right. This family in this nest was her world... and she knew she needed to be better, for all four of them now. Then, in that soft lavender moonlight, she began softly to sing.

"Flaihh arhva..."