Reunion - Part 2

Posted on Sun Feb 3rd, 2019 @ 10:45pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Jaeih Dox-t'Aan & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Earthly Visitation
Location: Starfleet Intelligence
Timeline: 2396, during Shore Leave

There she stood, again. In the hallway of her mothers quarters at Starfleet Intelligence, Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox of the Starship Hera took a deep breath, preparing to once again confront her mother. But this time, with a greater purpose. Behind her, in the hallway was Commander Rita Paris, Dox's first officer, closest friend and the woman that the young Romulan thought of as a sister.

Like before, Rita was there to offer emotional support but knew that this was something that the red-headed Romulan woman needed to confront herself. Looking over her shoulder, Dox flashed a tight-lipped smile and gently nodded as she silently mouthed, thank you. Releasing her breath with a sigh, she stepped forward as the door opened with a characteristic hiss. But what Rita Paris didn't see was the shift in Dox's expression. The tight lipped smile was gone, replaced with resolve.

Inside, the room looked much the same as it had the day before when Mother and Daughter tried to connect and failed, buried under lies and willful silence. But today, Mnhei'sahe Dox was committed that she would leave this room either with a Mother or without. Sitting at a small dining table across the room by the windows was Jaeih Dox. Mnhei'sahe's mother, former Romulan engineer, former smuggler and current prisoner of Starfleet Intelligence.

"I thought that it was some cruel human joke when they told me that you were coming back. Your Captain must have significant pull indeed to arrange two visits in a single week." Jaeih spoke from across the room, her fingers crossed as her hands sat at the table. With a nod, she gestured to the open seat across from her. "I assume your... sister... is waiting in the hall, again?"

Walking across the room, the younger woman pulled out the chair and sat before her stern-faced Mother. "Do not speak disrespectfully of her, Mother. You know that I have named her as my Rinam, and that makes her my family. I won't have it."

The younger woman's tone was sharp and firm, and to her surprise, the elder Dox was taken aback by the display of power. "Very well. I... apologize."

Suddenly, Jaeih realized that this visit was not going to be a mere social one. "You have more you wish to say, I assume? More than simply questions for me?"

Looking her mother square in the eyes, Dox answered with a quick resolve. "I have no more questions for you, Mother. What I need to know, I'll find out on my own. But I did come here to say something. There are... scales that need to be balanced."

At that, Jaieh sat back straight. She had rarely seen this side of her daughter and she was in one moment both proud and slightly frightened. She was not a woman accustomed to relinquishing power in a relationship, but it had become clear that her daughter was not going to give her a say in the matter.

Feeling the knot of anxiety in her stomach, replaced by a swirl of fire, Mnhei'sahe kept her gaze locked as she spoke. "You named me Mnhei'sahe. Ruling Passion. The central tenant of Rihannsu culture and belief. The name given to the honor long abandoned by our people that demands balance. If I am to honor this name, then I must do no less."

Tilting her head, Jaeih suddenly felt her own stomach go tight. She suspected what her daughter was about to say, but found her own voice dry and silent.

"Fifteen years ago, in order to escape my life with you upon the Forager, I sabotaged the impulse drive of the ship. I did so in order for us to be discovered and captured by Starfleet. I decided that a possible life in prison was preferable to the life I had been living." The words hung like dead things in the air and Jaieh was shocked. Shocked not just at the revelation, but by the cold things sitting behind her daughter's eyes. There were no welling tears. No quiver to her voice. Nothing of the frightened, anxious young girl she knew.

For her part, Dox kept to herself what she chose. She would offer her mother no comfort by telling her how long she had planned her own suicide before deciding instead to mutiny. She offered nothing except the facts. Placing her hands on the table, the stout young officer stood up and straightened her tunic. "Now that scale is balanced. Do with it as you will, Mother."

She turned to walk towards the door, throwing back in her mothers face the words so often used against her as a child to manipulate her. In her seat, Jaeih was shuddering in place. She was shocked, not by the statement that she had long suspected to be true, but by the coldness with which it had been delivered. It was a cold that terrified the elder Romulan to her core.

"Mnhei'sahe!!" She called out in a panic, getting up so quickly to follow after that she slammed the table with her knees and knocked her own chair to the ground. "Mnhei'sahe... I know. I've always known, at least in here."

Pressing her balled hand tight into her midsection, below the right breast where the Romulan heart is, her eyes were filled with welling tears as the elder Romulan felt an unfamiliar emotional panic overtake her. "Please... please don't go. Please, I'm sorry."

Turning back to face her, Dox's face remained closed and distant. "Sorry for what, Mother?"

The young officer paused, raising an eyebrow waiting for an answer while Jaieh struggled for the words. "Would you prefer that I make it easier for you? Because I'm done. I'm done trying to reach you as a daughter. And I'm done blaming myself for the life you forced on me. Is that what you're sorry for?"

Then she turned back to face her mother, looking slightly up at the taller woman, who shrank at the sight. "Are you sorry that you knew, and perhaps kept that to yourself because it gave you emotional leverage? Because you knew I would never do what I'm doing right now?"

Her eyes tightened to a squint as she shouted. "IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE SORRY FOR!?"

In that moment, Jaeih stood in utter grief. She watched her loving, sensitive, warm daughter become what she had always dreaded seeing happen. She watched as her daughter become herself and it was perhaps the most painful thing she had ever experienced. "Please, Mnhei'sahe. This... this isn't you."

"Who am I then, Mother?" Dox answerd with a hiss.

The two stood in silence for what felt like a thousand years. The daughter had become the Mother and it was a bitter thing. Then, the tension cracked as Mnhei'sahe's tight posture loosened ever so slightly. "If this is what I have to be to survive what you made, then so be it. But... I'd rather be your daughter again."

Then she shook her head with her coldness replaced with a reserved sadness. "But I can't be that the way I was before. And I can't let myself be that victim another day. I won't. You don't have to say or do anything today. I have no expectations."

Then the younger woman straightened back up as she readjusted her uniform. "I'm willing to bury the past with Melanie, Mother." She spoke, evoking the human name her Father forced on her that Jaieh reinforced with decades of lies.

"One day, I will know who I am inside. Truly. And on that day, I would hope that I will be able to share that true name with you." Finally, the emotional barricade Dox had constructed in her mind had begun to crack just a hair. "But today... that couldn't happen. I can't trust you, Mother. There's a galaxy of lies between us I can't fly across by myself. But I'm here on this side, and now you know my last secret from you. When you're ready to meet me in the middle, you know how to contact me."

The elder woman hessitantly tried to step forward as she drew a breath to speak, impossibly defeated, but she froze in her tracks as Mnhei'sahe raised a hand ever so slightly. "No, Mother. It's not happening today. Not like this. I need you to think about who you want to be. Really think, because if you can't be true with me, then I'm done. Forever. I will warp away and you will cease to have a daughter and I will not look back."

"I DO love you, Mother. Jolan'tru." With that, the traditional Romulan farewell, Dox turned and walked purposefully toward the door. There was no more to be said as the doors wooshed open and Dox entered to cooridor.

For a few seconds, Jaeih simply watched in shock. Then, before Mnhei'sahe could reach the turbolift, she ran into the Hall after her. "Mnhei'sahe, please! Don't do this!"

Arms crossed beneath that ridiculous bustline and back against the wall, as Jaeih left her room to chase her daughter, she was faced with the sudden and rather solid-appearing form of Commander Rita Paris. Who had apparently been parked right outside, and heard at least some of the exchange. That friendly face was set in a scowl of disgust that looked all too familiar on the face of a human, at least to her. Glowering at her with considerable and obvious rage, the humanest human who ever humaned raised an accusing finger at the captive intelligence asset, as she hissed one word long, low and slow.

"KAEFH."

At the sound of a human using the Rihan word for 'shame' at her, Jaieh went from pain right back to her more customary anger. She went rigid and decided if Paris was going to try and use her own tounge against her, she would return the attention in kind.

Looking slightly up at the taller human officer, Jaeih began shouting back in Rihan at Paris. "How DARE you speak of shame to me, Human! You..."

But before another word could be uttered and before Rita could respond, Mnhei'sahe Dox spun sharply around from the doors of the turbolift, hissing back in perfect Terran. "MOTHER! I told you to NEVER disrespect my Sister. Utter so much as another word, and I guarantee you it will be the last you ever speak in my presence!"

Across the corridor, Jaieh went white as the green blood flush from her face. She stood, a whirlwind of emotions unmasked. Confusion, anger and fear played off of her face as she straightened herself up, waiting for her daughter to leave.

"You are an intelligence asset maintained in a minimum security facility because you are judged to be a low flight risk. In short, you know your place. If you forget your place, new quarters can be assigned for you to accommodate your revised flight risk. Your call." Paris continued to glower at the woman, now in an official capacity.

While her authority might be dubious, it was Starfleet Intelligence, and she was a Starfleet officer. Plus whatever strings had been pulled Rita felt quite confident the captain could unpull them just as easily.

As the Romulan mother closed the door of her well-appointed cell, Jaieh stood, a mix of anger and sadness across her face playing in equal measure. Even so, the tension between the elder Romulan woman and the pair of Starfleet officers was thick like a dense fog as the turbolift arrived, then the doors closed.

Still standing in her room alone, Jaieh Dox fumed as tears welled up in her eyes. In one brief moment, she had somehow lost the Daughter she so desperately wanted to know again. Then her mind turned to the image of Rita Paris as she muttered to herself in Rihan. "Not lost... taken."

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In the turbolift, the two women stood in silence for a moment as Dox closed her eyes and took a long breath. Unlike her prior visit, no tears came to the young woman this time. Instead, she simply breathed, trying to remember the meditation techniques Sonak had taught her to re-center herself and calm the rage and pain swirling in her stomach.

No words were spoken. The trip passed in silence, for part of the intuitive human's gift was to know when no words were needed.