Open The Floodgates

Posted on Mon Jan 7th, 2019 @ 8:57pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Sonak

Mission: Section 31-B
Location: USS Hera, Deck 8, Lieutenant Junior Grade Dox's quarters
Timeline: 2396

The two women sat together for what seemed like an eternity as Melanie Dox slowly started breathing more normally. She relaxed her grip on Rita Paris as her arms, exhausted, slowly floated down to her own sides. Leaning back slightly, her eyes were thick and puffy from tears and she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

"I'm... I'm sorry. I've been." Melanie stammered as she spoke, her voice a cracked and hoarse whisper. The shattered lieutenant sat, struggling to put into words what nearly thirty years of anger and pain she didn't know she was repressing finally coming to the surface felt like.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” the Starfleet siren replied softly as she handed Dox a remarkably absorbent self-cooling hankie she had packed for the occasion.

"When I talked to her last week..." Melanie sniffled between breaths." I was so angry and so... scared. I'm still..." Fresh tears ran down her cheeks as she looked up into her friend’s attentive gaze.

"I'm scared, Rita." She bit the bottom of her lip as she spoke. "I... I blocked out half of my childhood. Just let myself forget who... what... I was. What I looked like, what he was." In spite of everything, Melanie froze again, afraid to say more for the most fleeting of instances before remembering why she called Paris in the first place.

"I... I forgot my own NAME, Rita." She wiped the tears away again. "What does that say about me?"

A small smile graced the face of the explorer as she lightly placed a finger under the chin of the wrung-out Romulan, bringing her gaze up to meet that of the last of the American girls. “That says that you were a child, Mel. Most people… well, most humans at least… don’t even have memories that stick until the age of five. There’s no shame in being too young to remember. Plus people tend to block out trauma. I darn near died of a synaptic overload once, and they had to tell me about me keeling over with my nose fountaining blood. It’s a natural defense, Dox. Beating yourself up over that is no good, because it’s you being unfair to you.”

Pulling back slightly, the eyes of the buxom bombshell narrowed slightly. “So what is your name, if you don’t mind me asking? It doesn’t change who you are to me- I want you to know that,” she qualified, as the last thing she wanted to do was make the distraught young pilot feel worse.

Blowing her nose on the hanky, Melanie looked down for a moment. She smiled ever so slightly as she spoke. "Mnhei'sahe. My mother named me Mnhei'sahe." She looked up at Rita and smiled just a little broader. "It means 'ruling passion'."

But an instant after saying it, her face closed in a wince as she titled her head back down. "She... she told me that after..." Melanie put her hand up to an ear. "When she would call me by name, it would give me nightmares. It would make me try and remember and I freaked out."

Opening her eyes up, but keeping her head down, she continued. "So... Melanie was a compromise. The name he picked before everything went wrong. She let me forget... She didn't want me to hurt anymore, I guess."

Crossing her arms over the tops of her knees, Dox buried her chin between them, whispering. "I... don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore, Rita."

“Hey, hey, hey now,” the out of date officer replied in a calming tone. “I have an important question for you. And it will be easy to give a flippant answer, but it’s a real question. Because right now you are standing at a crossroads, and it’s time for you to make a choice.”

“Now you know who you started off as, and you know who you were made to be. All of this was when you were a child, with no choice in any of it. But now you’re a grown woman- an ace pilot and a darn good Starfleet officer. So now the choices are yours. So I ask you, my friend- who do you want to be, hm?” The tone was soft and kind, and they eyes that sought hers out were filled with compassion. She could encourage, but this was a choice the little lieutenant had to make, and a question she had to answer for herself.

But it was a question she didn't want to think about. Melanie leaned her head back against the wall and sighed as she thought about everything Rita Paris had just said and knew she couldn't avoid it any longer. "I want to..."

Taking a deep breath, Melanie paused to think sincerely. "I want to try and put myself back together, Rita. I want to not be a bunch of pieces that don't fit anymore, if that makes any sense."

In attempting to help someone, making it all about you was generally considered counterproductive. But it seemed to help Melanie Dox immensely to know that the seemingly bulletproof first officer was, in fact, just a mere mortal like everyone else. So in this case she made an exception, as she reached for an inspirational. Scooting out from beside Dox, Rita Paris maneuvered herself to sit in front of the aching soul, then told her tale.

"Since I wasn't a boy, I wasn't good for anything in the Paris family," Rita Paris began, as her eyes slowly unfocused as memories played out in her mind. "If my grades weren't perfect, I was a failure. Daddy was willing to let me be involved in as many intramural activities I liked, so long as I understood that he wouldn't be there. Anything Albert did was golden, and whatever I did just drew more criticism. My father was a misogynist whom I still to this day think had a hand in the death of my mother somehow. He hated me for the fact of my gender, and until a certain age, I couldn't understand that. Once I did understand it I hated myself for being a girl."

"My rebellion was Starfleet. 'There's been a Paris in Starfleet since before it was Starfleet' is a saying in my family, because we're a fleet family. My father fought my appointment tooth and nail because he didn't want me to be out there embarrassing the family name out there in Starfleet. All while I'd already fended off two arranged marriages in what I now recognize as his attempt not only to get another in with a prominent fleet family of old school fleeters like the Deckers or the Tuckers or the Yamaguchis." Rita paused to draw in a long breath, then refocused on the moment.

"If I got married, then I would take my husband's last name. Then I wouldn't be a Paris anymore, he would have a son in law to give him grandchildren and he could cease to have to deal with me except at holidays. Isn't that cheery?" The rebellious dynasty daughter smiled in mock cheerfulness, a very Stepford affair.

Watching the exaggerated expression on Rita's face, Dox couldn't help but smile a little.

"Clearly we all know how all of that played out in my life, despite the fact that the bastard had the transporter sabotaged that caused y first accident. Five years as a ghost because my domineering father wanted to 'scare' me off a deep space exploration starship. So I wouldn't besmirch the family name. Same weekend Albert went to his first captain's mast, ironically." The sour expression looked out of place on the pretty pilot's face, but she shook her head and pressed on.

"The point is, all my life, my father told me what I couldn't do, and what I couldn't be." Paris waved airily to dramatize her point. "Were he here right now he would take credit for my achievements by explaining how he had been hard on me to make me strive harder. But that wasn't the case at all. He was just a shitty little hog's pizzle of a man who hated woman. He didn't define me. Being a ghost didn't define me. Being lost in space and time didn't define me. Sonak doesn't define me. The job doesn't define me."

"We choose to define ourselves, Dox. Who we are, what we are, and who we want to changes over time. But the joy of free will is that we get to choose, every day. Right now you might not know who you are because of new data. But you'll figure it out, and you'll make it work. Because I do know you, Melanie Dox." Paris reached over to take the other woman's small, pale hand in her own. "You're my shipmate, one of the officers I rely upon, a hell of a pilot... and a good friend, with a good heart. I don't care if it's red or grey or holographic plaid- it's a good heart, and that makes you a good person."

"The rest, you'll figure out."

"Thank you, Rita." Melanie relaxed her posture and sniffled. Her anxiety was by no means under control, but for the moment it wasn't overwhelming her quite as much. Hearing Rita's story didn't take away her pain, but it helped her put it in perspective and make it seem somehow more manageable.

"It's... Good to know I really do have help figuring this... myself... out." She turned to face Rita, an awkward but sincere smile had begun to crack on her swollen, tear streaked face.

"Sweety, I'm gonna tell you straight. In this line of work, the universe is gonna throw you a lotta curve balls. We're Starfleet- we lean on each other, and that's how we get by," Paris smiled, offering practical advice meant to reassure. Rolling easily to her feet, she stepped over to the chest, popped it open to rummage inside briefly, then produced two half-liter containers. Producing a few spoons from elsewhere in the carrier, she stepped back over to sit beside her beleaguered buddy. Handing her one of the cold containers and a spoon, she explained.

"Chocolate double fudge chunk. Real ice cream, from the captain's stores." Popping open the lid, Rita jammed her spoon into it with gusto. "I don't know how they ease heartache on Romulus, but this is how us Earth girls do it."

A slight but hoarse chuckle came from the thoroughly drained young lieutenant. "If my mother is any measure, we don't ease heartache..." Melanie sat up straight in a faux authoritarian Aire, "We remember it well so as to better learn to render it powerless when next it tries to injure us."

Taking a spoonful of the decadent treat and savoring it's creamy richness, Melanie poked at the container with her spoon. With ice cream still in her mouth, she mumbled. "This is far superior."

There was a good minute of savoring the wonders of chocolate. The good stuff, real chocolate, tended to have an effect on most Vulcanoids. Which was handy, considering chocolate was Rita's cure-all for a galpal in distress. Or anyone, really. But her curiosity got the best of her, so cautiously, she began to explore the topic.

"It's hard to envision you with the pointy ears. Do you have a holo of your mom?"

Smiling, Melanie leaned forward slightly, gesturing with her head towards the small corner shelves. "Yeah, but Also a couple of printed pics over there." There were three framed pics on the small corner shelves. One, of a younger Melanie with her mother from years, another the crew photo, and the last a picture printed from one of their recent correspondences.

"But, yeah." She gestured to the ceiling, as she spoke. "Computer, call up still hologram of Jaeih Dox. Stardate 2395, please."

The computer chirped as the holographic image of Melanie's mother shimmered into focus in the center of the room. She was standing sternly with her hands behind her back, wearing a simple black tunic with a high neck. She was a good few inches taller and many pounds slimmer than her daughter. But from behind her traditionally cropped Romulan bangs was a face remarkably similar to that of her daughter's.

Peering at the holo, then to Melanie, Rita's eyes widened. "The computer could show you what your ears would likely have looked like. I know I wanna see, but the question is do you wanna see? Totally okay to tell me if I am overstepping a boundary there- I don't want to upset you!" the buxom bombardier waved her hands in mock surrender with a spoon in one hand and her ice cream in the other. "I just... you wanted to talk about it, so that means we need to talk about it, right? What do you say... take a look?"

Rolling her eyes and smirking sideways at Paris, Melanie spoke aloud to the room again. "Computer. Project hologram, Mnhei'sahe zero zero one, please."

As the image appeared, standing next to the projection of Jaeih Dox, Melanie plunged her spoon into her container of ice cream, pulling out a heaping scoop. She looked at the ice cream longingly as she spoke. "Put this together... Week and a half ago. Right after Doctor Dael confirmed the scar tissue."

With a mouth again filled with ice cream, Melanie continued. "I had to see what might have been for myself."

The hologram was a representation of Melanie as she was now. Standing at attention in her Starfleet uniform. Indistinguishable from normal but for the the prominent Romulan ears.

The bright blue eyes of the first officer grew wide as she leaned in to turn and study the image. Sitting back, Paris wagged a spoon at the projected hologram. "Okay, as a connoisseur, You look hella good in pointy ears. Not that there's anything wrong with the way your ears are now. But," the chronal cosmonaut paused to dig out another scoop of ice cream, slide it into her mouth then talk around it. "Look, they keep your hair on the sides back. They have a nice elegant taper at the tip there. They look... aristocratic."

"It's hard to process... missing something you forgot you had in the first place." Melanie became ever so slightly melancholy as she looked at the holographic image. Running a finger nervously atop a single ear, she paused to consider the action.

"I've done this my entire life." Melanie rubbed the top of her gear again. "A nervous tic I never gave much thought to, that I never realized was my subconscious mind remembering what should have been there. But what's done is done, I guess."

The feisty first officer rolled her eyes around the largely empty quarters, then finished by turning to Dox. "Ah, we could do that stuff in my day. If you want your ears back, go ask Doc and they'll fix you up... sorry," Rita held out a hand with a pained expression. "Not fix you, because you aren't broken. But if you want that back... those," Rita waved her spoon to the image. "They're your ears. You can decide to make them upside down. You can't wear crazy piercings unless it's a cultural thing, but you have bodily autonomy, and so long as it doesn't interfere with your Starfleet duties you can look however you like."

One blonde eyebrow raised dubiously. "You think everybody with a forehead implant on this boat is from some exotic alien planet? Point being, you can get them back. You can try them with an option to buy, because Doc can change them back. If you went to Doc about this I know for a fact they explained all of this to you... ah, but you couldn't really process it on top of everything else so you just kinda went into some shock and Doc gave you time and space to think about it. Check."

Standing back up, a much more laborious process for Melanie now that the physical tolls of attacking her fighting dummy wildly and her panic attack we're beginning to be felt. She groaned as her joints let out a series of squishy popping sounds. "Ugh..."

Stretching as she walked over to pick back up her drink from the side table next to the couch with a dry smile. "Yeah, they did." Melanie took a long swig of her drink while gesturing to the ears of the projection. "Asa ran a medical scan... Those are based on that. That's not just mirroring my mother's ears. Based on the tissue I currently have, if they use a soft tissue regeneration, opened the edges back up, removed the scar tissue and used an accelerated healing.. thingy, that's what would grow back."

Squinting slightly from soreness, Dox flumped back down on the small couch as she spoke. "I've thought about it. I'm still thinking about it." Talking one more long swig, she killed off the bottled Margarita mixer, swallowed and chuckled softly. Her voice a little less hoarse from the benefits of ice cream and drinks. "I stressed myself out for a day and a half when I was deciding to get this haircut."

Laughing a little easier, Melanie continued, tugging on one ear. "This will certainly take a little more consideration." She looked back up at her friend with a wide smile. "But it is something I'm considering. Really." Then her tone shifted slightly, taking a slightly more serious timbre.

"This all... it did break me a bit. I can't pretend it didn't." Melanie fiddled loosely with the empty bottle in her hands. "But it's okay. Because I know I don't have to fix myself alone anymore. And..." She paused to collect herself, this time pushing past positive emotions welling up to continue. "And I can take my time. Decide who I want to put myself back together to be. I know I'll have help there too."

A tear rolled down her cheek again, but this time from a feeling of warmth and love. "Seriously... thank you, Rita. For everything."

"We all break sometime, Melanie. Or Menay-say," Rita pronunciation of the elegant Romulan name was like a hick country cousin trying it out. "I've broken down plenty of times. There's no shame in it, because you didn't do it on duty and you didn't endanger anyone but yourself. And when you were in too deep, you were strong enough to admit it and reach out a hand for help."

"That's not something the gal I walked in a circle would have done. But this fine officer right here, she knew when to call for backup. This gal here, she knew when to call for a friend. And I am very proud to know this gal here, because she's my friend, she's a valued part of this crew, and I'd beam in after her if I knew she was in trouble." Which was saying a lot, given that it was fairly well known that Rita Paris literally did not even get near transporters because of how they tended to misbehave around her, and her own deep-seated and apparently justified fear of them.

A broad, tight lipped smile spread across her face at Rita's statement, knowing full well the time displaced first officers horrifying history with transporters. "Fvadt... don't make me cry again!" Melanie laughed as she spoke, letting out a 'damn' in Rihan.

"Okay. So, after all of this, would you rather go run it off, or is it time for a shower and some sleep? Or would you rather just sit here and talk about something else entirely?" Looking around the empty quarters, it seemed to be an apt analogy for the life of Lieutenant Junior Grade Dox. The space was there and the potential was there- what she chose to do with it was up to her. But that was an analogy that could wait for another day, Rita mused. For now she just had to let Dox decide what she needed.

"While I feel like I could sleep for a week... I..." Her natural anxiety made expressing what she felt a little difficult, but Melanie pushed past that to continue. "I kinda don't want to be alone right now, if that's okay." She smiled awkwardly at Rita.

The smile that settled on the face of the first officer was one born of understanding, and when she spoke, her tone was soft and gentle. “I can stay the night if you wish, Dox. I’ve never been through something like this, so I can’t say that I know how you feel. But I understand not wanting to be alone, I truly do. So I’m here as long as you need me, okay?”

Smiling, the fragile young pilot couldn't quite wrap her troubled mind around the idea of not feeling alone in the universe. But she knew that she liked it, and indulged herself the desire for more as she continued to laugh and talk with her friend and first officer.

Looking forward into an uncertain tomorrow, she didn't know who she would be as she tried to imagine her own future. But regardless of if she continued as Mnhei'sahe or Melanie, she knew she wouldn't continue alone anymore.

And for that moment in time, it was enough.