A Cry for Help

Posted on Mon Jan 7th, 2019 @ 12:57pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Sonak

Mission: Section 31-B
Location: Crew Quarters, Deck 8
Timeline: 2396

It had been days since Lieutenant Junior Grade Melanie Dox had talked with her mother via hologram. Days since she had learned things about her own past that she was desperately trying to not think about as she slammed her forearm hard into the neck of the exercise dummy in her quarters.

Things she was now wishing had stayed forgotten.

As Dox continued her assualt, the song 'Ultra' by the 20th century human Metal band KMFDM blared loudly. Dox grunted angrily as she rapidly continued to hit the head of the dummy. She had abandoned any semblance of the Romulan martial art of Llaekh-ae'rl and was simply flailing angrily now. As the song came to an end, Melanie flumped against the dummy, exhausted.

"Computer..." She muttered to the room. "End music."

The drained young pilot slid to the ground and sat back against the base of the dummy, breathing heavily. She shut her eyes trying to catch her breath as a flash of the image of her hands, covered in blood, filled her head.

Immediately, she sat up ramrod straight with wide eyes. She glanced down at her own hands and winced slightly as she noticed that she had skinned her knuckes on the dummy. They were throbbing and warm with the human/Romulan blood that had a distinctive brown color to it. A color she now knew was caused by genetic alterations performed on her as a child.

Looking up, there were smears of brown on the head of her dummy. It had been weeks since her psychic attack by the god Anansi, but the burried memories he unearthed in her mind still lingered in her brain.

Sighing as she looked around her sparsely decorated quarters, the anxious young woman stopped on the small shelving unit in the corner and the few photos framed in it. Specifically, the photo of the crew of the U.S.S. Hera that First Office Rita Paris had insisted on having taken.



After a few moments thinking, Melanie shakily stood up and walked over to the console on the wall near the door to her quarters. She pressed the pad which responded with it's characteristic chirp, but lingered not speaking for what felt entirely too long. "Uh... Lieutenant Dox to... um... Commander Paris."

"Paris here, what can I do for you, Chief?" Commander Rita Paris had a habit of calling all of the section chiefs 'chief' from time to time, just to mix it up in addition to her predilection for using honorifics as well as rank.

On the small endtable by her bed was a work PaDD that Melaine had walked over to grab. She gestured with the PaDD as if Paris could see her. "I... I have the updated crew rotations for next week that you wanted to see in the morning ready and..." Dox trailed off, rethinking her approach.

"And... um. I'm sorry to bother you, Commander. I..." Dox took a deep breath as she steeled herself to continue. "I don't know what your availability is... but would it be possible to... um... to talk?" Melanie winced a bit, feeling ever so slightly pathetic in the moment.

=^= Of course, Chief. Shall I report to your locale for a meeting? =^= Paris' tone was light and easy, seemingly carefree, although that martial stride of hers was definitely in motion.

"Uh..." Looking down at herself, Melanie stuttered. She was only wearing a sweat soaked sports bra, a pair of black leggings and sneakers and very likely reeked. " Well, I'm in my quarters and... I'm kind of a mess."

=^= Excellent plan, chief. Why don't you grab a shower and I'll join you in five minutes. Paris out. =^= Abruptly ending the conversation, the leggy commander hustled to her quarters. While the specifics were lacking, the distress was evident. Whatever was going on, Dox had cracked, and she needed someone to talk to. As she marched across the Hera, Commander Rita Paris cleared her schedule. There was nothing pressing happening, and it sounded very much like she was needed for a crisis.

Fortunately, Rita had a 'go bag' packed for such occasions, and strode at high speed into her quarters, the door sensors long ago having been adjusted to open in advance of her speedy approach. Pulling it out, now all she had to do was give Dox the rest of that five minutes for a shower.

Many women in such a circumstance would fret, worry and speculate about what crisis had arisen, what tragedy befallen, what had struck so fiercely the round little pilot of whom Paris was admittedly quite fond. But with zen-like detachment Paris scrolled through work emails to keep herself occupied while the timer ran down on the shower counter. For life with the kolinahr master had taught her patience, and zen. She would find out when Dox told her. She would deal with it then, in a linear existence fashion.

Eyeing the timer, Rita's pretty face set in a slight frown. Stupid timer.

Meanwhile, in her quarters Dox was scrambling to take what felt like the world fastest shower, opting for the sonic option for expediency. Practically running out of the shower, Melanie put bandages on her bruised knuckles, grabbed all the loose workout gear and deposited them in the bathroom hamper while grabbing some casual clothes from her mostly empty dresser.

Not giving it too much thought, Dox threw on the first clean outfit she could find that wasn't a uniform. In this case, that meant a pair of black leggings and a slightly baggy Starfleet academy sweatshirt. She wasn't planning on meeting with the ship's First Officer quite so quickly, but chastised herself slightly for not being expected for the unexpected where Rita Paris was concerned.

The door chime sounded five minutes after the call had ended.

Taking a deep breath to try and calm her nerves, Dox found herself standing slightly at attention before remembering that this was not and official function.

"Come in."

Stepping in was Rita Paris. Not Commander Paris, but the yoga pants-wearing blonde in the San Francisco 49ers zip-up hoodie sweatshirt with the slippers on her feet. The party girl, apparently, who came with her own lightweight Starfleet portable cryo container with a padded shoulder strap. Having intuited what she was needed for, the plucky extradimensional explorer had come prepared.

Taking in the stark and sparsely populated space in a glance as she crossed the quarters, Paris turned those bright blue eyes on the anxious aviatrix. Peering at her for a full two seconds, Paris carefully and deliberately set down the carrying case, then held her arms out, inviting a hug with eyebrows upraised in a silent question.

An awkward smile crept across Melanie's face as she looked at Rita. She stepped over, somewhat hesitantly and took advantage of the offered hug. "Um... thank you for coming, Comm... Rita."

Not wanting to linger too long, Dox stepped back rubbing the too in an ear nervously. "I didn't mean to bother you... I was just..."

“You aren’t bothering me, Miss Dox. I have nowhere to be but right here, right now,” Paris reassured. “What’s up?”

Stopping herself as she rambled, Melanie rolled her eyes at her own nervousness. "When I first came on board, you told me I could always come to you if I needed help..." Melanie paused to sigh, blushing with embarrassment. "And I could... Kinda use that right now."

Bending over to pop open the cooler, Paris proceeded to unpack a bag of something named Oreos, a couple of bottled margarita spritzers, and a hankie. Setting the cookies on the portable refrigerator, she offered a bottle to Dox as she settled herself on the deck to use the chest as a table.

"I am all ears, and at your disposal, Miss Dox. Melanie," The calm commander said in a soothing tone. "I'll listen, you tell me what's wrong and get it off your chest, then we can maybe talk about it. No pressure. How's that sound?" Tearing open the cookie bag, Rita Paris offered up a cookie.

As usual, Rita Paris had done the unexpected, and Melanie couldn't help but smile. There was an obvious effort put into a presentation that was designed to be disarmingly casual, and Melanie came over to take the offered bottle.

"Heh... Thanks." The rotund Lieutenant chuckled nervously and took a sip as she paced in a slow circle before settling on the small couch against the windows that had come with the room. Melanie sat quietly for nearly a full minute, looking down at the bottle in her hand before she could speak again.

"I'm... sure you read my report on the... 'Anansi incident'. About what happened at the Worldship. How he dug into my mind and pulled out..." Melanie felt a chill as she remembered the attack herself. "It... was a violation in and of itself. To have something just rifle through your mind against your will... I..."

The usually loquacious and chatty commander sat silently, nodding. This wasn't anywhere for pithy wisdom or cracker barrel philosophy. The best thing that Paris could do at this point was just listen- this had to tumble out from Dox the way that she needed it to come out, with no prompting or interruptions. So Rita listened and watched, nodding slowly.

Standing up again with a growing level of unease, as of the couch itself was trapping her, Melanie began to pace as she spoke. "I filed all my reports on it. On... everything that's happened since. Followed all the regulations for dealing with a mission-based trauma hoping it would help. I've tried just burying myself in work, hoping not to think about... any of it."

Taking a long drink of her margarita, Melanie continued. "But... It's what came from it. What it pulled up out of my head..." She turned to look at her First Officer that had quickly become a friend. "Too many things... things I didn't know that I didn't know."

Internally, Paris worried where this was going. She knew that Dox’s relationships with her parents were strained at best, but again, she just nodded and maintained an external calm, despite her growing apprehensions.

Her growing anxiety turned into a flash of frustrated anger as Melanie yelled slightly. "I wish I just didn't know!!" Immediately after the outburst, she went still and her voice shuttered with the faintest of a whisper as she shut her eyes hard to try and hold back tears.

"Why did I ask her? Why couldn't I just forget again?"

Now was the time to prick the dam and see what burst out, Rita felt more than reasoned- after all, she was a creature of instinct. The tone of the junior officer's voice over the comms had been enough to make Paris move quickly so no one would hear their conversation, and for her to address Dox only as 'chief' so no one could put it together that one of the senior staff might be cracking. It had told her that casual civilian clothes were called for here, not the imposing crimson uniform with its rank pips. Now it told her not to step up and offer comfort, but to probe so the storm could be unleashed.

"What do you remember, Melanie? What do you know that is so terrible, who did you ask?" Rita Paris probed, prepared for rough emotional seas ahead.

Wiping a single tear from her cheek as she talked, Melanie sat back down on the couch, trying to calm herself down, but it wasn't working. She put her drink down on the side table, stalling as she was afraid of answering. Afraid of letting herself feel everything that was welling up inside of her.

"My... My mother. A little while ago, the Captain told me that she had pulled some strings and got my mother transfered from protective custody to Starfleet Intel." Melanie sniffled as she spoke. "I was so excited. I was going to be able to actually talk to her again. I mean, holograms, but not just recorded messages, ya'know."

Another silent nod from the archaic astronaurt was the reply, as the tension in the room grew thicker.

The pit of anxiety in Melanie's stomach tightened as she thought. "But what Anansi showed me. I had to know. I had to ask her. Get the truth."

Looking over at Rita Paris, then back down to herself, Dox scrunched her face trying to contain herself. "Fvadt! I feel like an idiot." She was rambling and she knew it.

“You’re not an idiot, so enough of that. This isn’t easy,” Rita reassured from her spot on the deck, down low where she wouldn’t be looming over the distressed young woman. “Deep breath now, tell me what happened.”

"For my whole life, I thought this is who I was. But... When I dream. I dream of being a little girl, and I look like her. Like my mom." Melanie hung her head as she talked. "Romulan. And I thought they were just dreams."

Standing up again, Melanie paced as she talked. "I found out... I was..." Her anger at not being able to express herself clearly was beginning to show more and more.

Taking a deep breath, Melanie continued. "My father... couldn't handle having a little Romulan girl. When I was about four, in a drunk rage, he... kidnapped me. Took me to a doctor... and I use the term loosely. Had my ears cut off... My DNA altered... to make me look more..." She choked back tears as she spoke. "...human. Apparently, I was awake the whole time... screaming. Improper anasthetic. I checked with Asa. They looked me over and there's residual scar tissue. Genetic damage they need to repair." Melaine ran her fingers over an ear.

For her part, the human adventurer who had grown up with a host of daddy issues worked to keep the anger and revulsion off her carefully compassionate expression. What was being told to her filled her with a surprising rage, but this was neither the time nor the place for that, not just yet. Right now, the confession had to be heard.

Emotionally wrung out, Melanie flumped against the wall of her quarters and slid to sit on the floor. "I always just thought I was nothing. Not Romulan, not human." She was openly crying now. "Romulans... I don't know what you know about it... but growing up I was taught that Romulans liked mating... breeding... With other races to strengthen their bloodlines. They... believe in a certain... genetic superiority. And in a lot of cases, it's kinda true. Romulan genetics in someone tend to be hyper dominant. My father's human. My mother's father was human. But biologically, there's very little about me that's Human. My insides are all set up pretty damn Romulan."

Pulling the bandage off her knuckles, Melanie winced slightly. "Copper based blood, discolored from what they did to me." She leaned her head back against the wall, letting out a humorless chuckle.

"But I always thought I was the exception to all that. I'm a redhead with fucking freckles. Sure, I can pluck my eyebrows to take the points down and I have her eyes... But unless I was actively bleeding, I looked human enough. But that was a lie, too."

Looking with a pained expression at Paris, Melanie continued. "He mutilated me because he couldn't bear to look at me as I was. And it fucked me up so bad it took a GOD digging through my head to make me remember it."

That was all that Rita Paris could listen to, and in a very deliberate movement, she crawled across the floor to the wall where the emotionally wrung out young officer slumped against the wall. Gathering the smaller young woman in her arms, Rita Paris stroked the curly red hair and made a shooshing noise.

Sitting in Rita's arms, Melanie curled her arms and legs in as tight as she could as her body shook and her breath went shallow.

“You are the furthest thing from nothing I have ever met, Melanie Dox, and I won’t have you talking about yourself like that. As for your father,” Paris could not hold back the growl from her voice as she spoke the words, because her fury over the facts was a bit stronger than her self-control. “Leave it to a man to be blind to the potential of the wonder he helped bring into the world, and try to make her into what he wants.”

“What’s been done to you is deplorable, horrible and yeah, that can mess you up,” Paris joked grimly. “So you’re right to feel angry, hurt, confused, enraged, afraid and violated. You’ve been through a lot here recently, finding out all of this. So tell me about it. Tell me how this makes you feel, because you need to get it out. No judgment, okay? This is all off the record- just you and me here, okay?”

The stout pilots arms shot around Rita Paris' back and she clutched tightly to her friend as she felt waves of panic overtake her. With her head buried in Paris' shoulder, Melanie let out a coarse, guttural scream punctuated by a wave of sobs. The effort of trying to contain the conflicting emotions she had been struggling with for weeks had overwhelmed her beyond her ability to control

"WHY WASN'T I GOOD ENOUGH?! WHY DID HE HAVE TO BREAK ME!?!?!"

The sobs began to slow as Melanie's voice shrank to a hoarse whisper, not even aware in the moment that she was slipping completely into the Romulan dialect of Rihan she was raised speaking.

"Arhem ssuajukhe. Arhem ssuajukhe, ri'ranov."

While she didn’t speak a word of Romulan, the time-tossed temptress understood the intention well enough. “You were always good enough, child. You were always better than he gave you credit for, and he couldn’t see that because of his own willful blindness. Because you were strong and unique and that threatened him. Because you challenged what he thought you were capable of, and proved him wrong. Men hate to be proven wrong. His ego needed soothing and you were the victim.”

Though she was speaking to Dox, in truth, Rita spoke from the heart. Because she very much understood never being good enough, never being right, and being assailed over and over again to become that which she was not, yet what was wanted by the man whose approval she so desperately sought despite the impossibility of that eventuality.

“You are unique and special, a child of the universe who belongs here. You are much greater than you give yourself credit, and no one can take that away from you, not then, not now, not ever. It’s okay, it’s okay… let it out.” The first officer rocked gently in what she hoped was a soothing motion. She’d never seen anyone so traumatized, and while she was no professional, she knew what she’d want someone to do in such a moment.

So the earth girl from another reality held her injured Romulan friend, and let her give voice to her grief and rage and pain at the truth of her existence.