Interlude – Facing forwards to the past - Part 1
by Commander Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Chelsea Dunham
Post Details
ON:
Ensign Rimmec, Pia, viewed her schedule for the day. She noted a session with Dr. Milarno and smiled. Even she had to admit she was getting to the point at which it would have been better to have handed his case over due to her own feelings becoming increasingly involved but she would face the music if she had to. He was too fascinating a case to pass over.
Instructed to give Dr Milarno her undivided attention, Pia hadn't been booked for any other sessions as a matter of course but just as she was settling in to do her 'paperwork', the receptionist came in with a request from "a Romulan lady" who was at the front desk asking to be seen.
The Receptionist said the lady seemed upset and had asked for someone who *wasn't Romulan*. The request piqued the Bajoran/Terran Assistant Counselor's curiosity and she agreed to see the *lady*
"Show her in please, May" she instructed and cleared her desk as the mysterious lady in question walked in.
“Thank you for seeing me,” the Romulan said casting a furtive glance over her right shoulder as she passed through the doorway; with no make up and her hair pulled back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck her eyes shone out like cut emeralds catching sunlight, but that was only apparent in the rare moments that she raised them from the floor. She was dressed very plainly, a grey tunic over black trousers - Isha had locked herself in her suite, left all the trappings of her usual self at the Consulate and let herself out through the 'back door' she would not be missed for an hour or two.
"Not at all, please sit down. I'm Pia... Pia Rimmec. May I know your name? It's more friendly if we're on better terms but if you'd rather not, then of course, I understand completely." Pia introduced herself.
“My name?” Isha hesitated as though she had not thought that would be required, “Is … is … S'anra, it means ‘the servant of the Rihannsu’.” she explained the lie as her gaze flickered over the small office taking in the pictures on the walls, the contents of the shelves and the lay of the furniture. “May I?” she asked with a wave toward the couch.
"There or anywhere you like" Pia encouraged with a wide smile of welcome. "Can I get you some refreshments?"
"A glass of water, perhaps," Isha replied uncomfortable without the ability to draw on her usual resources. "Here or there?" she asked, wavering between two seats.
"No, that's fine. Please just start wherever you want to." Pia came around the desk and sat to one side. "Please make yourself comfortable."
“I work at the embassy,” Isha said lowering herself into the seat and sitting upright as having to perch on a rigid and basic metal chair before facing an interrogator. As she waited she rubbed her left arm through her sleeve, it was still sore and even though the marks were fading, and the nerves no longer trapped, if she looked at her skin she could still see the Cardassian's fingers bruising her.
"I see. Do you like it there?" Pia asked, apparently nonchalantly. She was watching the *lady*, taking in the clues.
"Like it, in this seat? ... ah, the embassy!" she was so uneasy that a simple question threw her. "I like the embassy well enough," Isha replied. "Do you like it here in your office? An unfair question,” Isha said with a brief smile. “I am a politician, of course I enjoy my job, it is what I am,” she said. “I didn’t come here to discuss politics though. Well, maybe, of a sort. What did you say your name was?”
"Rimmec, Pia." she replied gently.
“I did come here for a specific reason,” Isha said. Hesitantly she raised her right sleeve, “A fellow diplomat,” she told Pia, “before you suggest that I report it I will allow you to draw the conclusions you are leaning toward.”
"I'm not in a position to make assumptions, S'anra. However if you don't wish me to put this consultation on record, that is entirely your right to decide. Would you like to tell me why you wanted to talk to me?" Pia drew her 'patient' back to the subject.
Isha rose. “The assault took place on my territory, the only recourse I would be for my government to complain to his which would cause a diplomatic incident that I cannot afford. What can I do?” before she had finished talking she was back in the chair. Isha no longer knew why she was here. She had managed to reduce it in her mind at least to a minor incident but now she came to talk about it ...
"Why don't you start at the beginning. You say you've been attacked. Can you tell me by whom? What was the first thing that happened?" Pia encouraged gently.
The Romulan bit her lower lip, rolling it between her teeth as she stared at Pia, "I want none of this on record, Pia," Isha said linked her fingers together over her knees, "Fabricate a file, maybe "S'anra" is having difficulty with a superior officer and doesn't know how to cope, its a common enough name and the Elements know that half of the younger ones cannot follow a simple order these days. Make something up, there cannot be a blank record for them to find that would point towards me."
"Very well, I can arrange that." Pia agreed knowing if she did not then she wouldn't be able to help this lady. It was as plain as the nose on her face who this lady actually was but the situation demanded the utmost patient confidentiality and it was the first priority that any patient coming for help had the right to that protection.
"It was the Cardassian Ambassador," Isha said not blinking, "I am the Romulan Ambassador. It was in my own embassy, in my own office. He came there to threaten me, nothing out of the ordinary in that, there is always a degree of tension between ambassadors, the exchange of words that hide their real meaning, my embassy is bigger than your embassy, you know the sort of thing. I did say something rather emasculating, I must admit." the corner of Isha's lip twitched very slightly at the memory, everything was going normally until then. "That was when the rules changed, he grabbed me and threw me into the wall, twice I think, and threatened to kill me. The next thing I knew he hurled me across the room and I fell. I just let him do it, no struggle, nothing. I stayed down while he did this to me snivelling like a beaten slave."
Pia was shocked but her professionally acquired and perfected art of keeping a straight, impassive *Counsellors' face* saved her from showing it.
"I think, S'anra, if I were attacked in that manner, I would have done the same. It sounds like basic self-preservation to me. I presume the Cardassian Ambassador is not a small man," she offered, trying to stay as neutral as possible given her inner outrage at hearing that this delicately built, elegant lady should have been brutalised in such a menacing manner.
“He is not,” Isha said stating a simple fact, “I thought he just wanted to frighten me at first, something that I am sure he is thrilled to have achieved, but now I am not so sure that was all.” Isha recalled the zealous fury in his eyes, as though he had chosen to blame her for all the troubles that had befallen Cardassia … she dismissed the image with a blink.
As her retina cleared Isha continued to stare at the woman unable to imagine what it was like to be caught between worlds; just like Doctor Adams the counsellor seemed to favour her Bajoran half, it was that, perhaps that caused Isha to choose to address her by her first name. “Pia, we have a saying - So the Praetor, so the Empire – it is one that in varying forms runs down through society, through Houses, through regiments, through all organised structures at every level of society – the meaning is the same though. The leader is a figurehead, the embodiment of honour, passion, strength and discipline. It applies to embassies too. An ambassador who cannot defend herself is weak and if my people on this station and beyond learn of this, I am undone, as are my Houses.”
"Could your House or staff consider you weak just because you are smaller and less physically powerful than an assailant?" Pia was confused. "I wonder, if you had fought him and died at his hand, should that have been better? I know some Bajorans who would have said yes but it's not the individual battles but the whole war that must be won in the end. A race of martyrs is a short-lived one, surely?"
Having spoken Pia realised that was a comment and she wasn't supposed to make personal observations. However, she might perhaps justify it as a question that would tell her, and more importantly Isha... er.... S'anra.... believed of the reaction she had experienced.
”You may use my name, just ensure that the file is ‘S’anra’s’” Isha said with what may have been a fleeting smile then she pushed her interlinked fingers more tightly together and continued. “That he could find me in a position where he could make such an attack speaks of weakness, if I cannot protect myself then I should surround myself with those who can: that is my responsibility and I failed it. I can blame no-one for the consequences but myself. Who leaves their borders unprotected but a fool?” Isha asked rhetorically. “Pia, if he had wanted me dead I would be, whether I had fought or not. He wants me afraid,” Isha said apparently finding the stretch of dark fabric over her knees very interesting. “I may have been shaken but I will not stand down,” Isha said raising her gaze in a cold and defiant emerald blaze.
"Have you ever found yourself in a situation before that you could compare to this?" Pia had a sort of remote instinctive feeling hovering on the horizon of her thoughts. She couldn't explain why she had asked that, but it seemed something they both should consider and if necessary dismiss.
“One receives death threats from time to time,” Isha said, “Though they are less often delivered in person … in the past there have been one or two men who have had difficulty accepting my position whether through a difference in House tradition, or the simple inability to view someone with no military background as a superior. Quite recently, and in the past, yes,” she admitted, "though they have resorted to violence only when I pushed them to it," Isha told her, "one can readily shrug off a physical threat once the moment has moved on."
"Perhaps...... as we do with a lot of traumatic experiences" Pia agreed. "But tell me, if you are expected to surround yourself with those who could protect you, how can you be blamed if they let you down?" she asked, looking curious.
Isha’s superiors wanted the consulate to be open, she was supposed to show that the Stelam Shiar could be approached and could be trusted; she had been following their orders, or if she was honest, stretching them so that there was not enough of a presence to keep her confined.
“I have improved my arrangements,” Isha said, though she suspected that t’Merek would be none too pleased with her if she discovered that the ambassador, less than a day after charging t’Merek to improve security at the consulate had slipped out of the ‘back-door’ with only a Type 1 phaser hidden at the small of her back for protection, its presence entirely concealed by the fall of her tunic.
“Pia, I have spent most of my life surrounded by tight security, and it is a fact that someone determined will always be able to find a way to penetrate the tightest cordon,” Isha told the counsellor, thinking how Rh’vaurek had found a chink in her husband’s measures to protect her, how Nniol had undermined and abused her in the heart of her own home, and how they had both believed themselves to be fully justified in their actions. Was this really any different?
“It is my hope that Getal has made his point,” Isha said with little conviction in her tone, “if so I will be careful not to push him so far in future, to do so would be to invite a repeat of the incident, but if this is not over I want to be able to face him on my feet, not on my knees. My people do not put great store in counsellors, one is expected to deal with one’s own problems but I have a great friend who I know would advise me to seek help with this …” Isha was getting close to articulating what she saw to be the crux of her problem, and she needed to find the root from which it had grown. “Pia, every time something like this has happened, I feel as though I am being punished for something, that I deserve it, and that I do not have the right to hit back.”
"Whyever would you feel that way? Do you recall any point in your life when you were told or felt that you'd been so bad you would be punished in the future?" Pia asked.
Isha laughed, the sound liquid like a pebbled brook in sunlight, “I’m hardly a rebel,” she said, “When one’s mother is both a parent and one’s hru’Hfrih one does as one is told, it is expected. Oh I’ve had the occasional stern talking to but I did nothing that was so awful that …” Isha paused, the smile that accompanied her laughter abruptly falling from her face. She reached for the glass of water and sipped watching the surface ripple as she placed it down again – how could she have forgotten that?
TBC....
OFF:
A JP between:
Ambassador Isha t'Khellian
NPC by Louise
Trying to put her head in order
and
Asst. Counsellor
Ensign Pia Rimmec
(NPC'd by jools)
by Commander Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Chelsea Dunham
Post Details
| Title | Facing forwards to the past - Part 1 | |
| Mission | Interlude | |
| Author(s) | Commander Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Chelsea Dunham | |
| Posted | Mon May 17, 2010 @ 7:13am | |
| Location | Assistant Counsellor's Office | |
| Timeline | SD18 - Afternoon |
Ensign Rimmec, Pia, viewed her schedule for the day. She noted a session with Dr. Milarno and smiled. Even she had to admit she was getting to the point at which it would have been better to have handed his case over due to her own feelings becoming increasingly involved but she would face the music if she had to. He was too fascinating a case to pass over.
Instructed to give Dr Milarno her undivided attention, Pia hadn't been booked for any other sessions as a matter of course but just as she was settling in to do her 'paperwork', the receptionist came in with a request from "a Romulan lady" who was at the front desk asking to be seen.
The Receptionist said the lady seemed upset and had asked for someone who *wasn't Romulan*. The request piqued the Bajoran/Terran Assistant Counselor's curiosity and she agreed to see the *lady*
"Show her in please, May" she instructed and cleared her desk as the mysterious lady in question walked in.
“Thank you for seeing me,” the Romulan said casting a furtive glance over her right shoulder as she passed through the doorway; with no make up and her hair pulled back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck her eyes shone out like cut emeralds catching sunlight, but that was only apparent in the rare moments that she raised them from the floor. She was dressed very plainly, a grey tunic over black trousers - Isha had locked herself in her suite, left all the trappings of her usual self at the Consulate and let herself out through the 'back door' she would not be missed for an hour or two.
"Not at all, please sit down. I'm Pia... Pia Rimmec. May I know your name? It's more friendly if we're on better terms but if you'd rather not, then of course, I understand completely." Pia introduced herself.
“My name?” Isha hesitated as though she had not thought that would be required, “Is … is … S'anra, it means ‘the servant of the Rihannsu’.” she explained the lie as her gaze flickered over the small office taking in the pictures on the walls, the contents of the shelves and the lay of the furniture. “May I?” she asked with a wave toward the couch.
"There or anywhere you like" Pia encouraged with a wide smile of welcome. "Can I get you some refreshments?"
"A glass of water, perhaps," Isha replied uncomfortable without the ability to draw on her usual resources. "Here or there?" she asked, wavering between two seats.
"No, that's fine. Please just start wherever you want to." Pia came around the desk and sat to one side. "Please make yourself comfortable."
“I work at the embassy,” Isha said lowering herself into the seat and sitting upright as having to perch on a rigid and basic metal chair before facing an interrogator. As she waited she rubbed her left arm through her sleeve, it was still sore and even though the marks were fading, and the nerves no longer trapped, if she looked at her skin she could still see the Cardassian's fingers bruising her.
"I see. Do you like it there?" Pia asked, apparently nonchalantly. She was watching the *lady*, taking in the clues.
"Like it, in this seat? ... ah, the embassy!" she was so uneasy that a simple question threw her. "I like the embassy well enough," Isha replied. "Do you like it here in your office? An unfair question,” Isha said with a brief smile. “I am a politician, of course I enjoy my job, it is what I am,” she said. “I didn’t come here to discuss politics though. Well, maybe, of a sort. What did you say your name was?”
"Rimmec, Pia." she replied gently.
“I did come here for a specific reason,” Isha said. Hesitantly she raised her right sleeve, “A fellow diplomat,” she told Pia, “before you suggest that I report it I will allow you to draw the conclusions you are leaning toward.”
"I'm not in a position to make assumptions, S'anra. However if you don't wish me to put this consultation on record, that is entirely your right to decide. Would you like to tell me why you wanted to talk to me?" Pia drew her 'patient' back to the subject.
Isha rose. “The assault took place on my territory, the only recourse I would be for my government to complain to his which would cause a diplomatic incident that I cannot afford. What can I do?” before she had finished talking she was back in the chair. Isha no longer knew why she was here. She had managed to reduce it in her mind at least to a minor incident but now she came to talk about it ...
"Why don't you start at the beginning. You say you've been attacked. Can you tell me by whom? What was the first thing that happened?" Pia encouraged gently.
The Romulan bit her lower lip, rolling it between her teeth as she stared at Pia, "I want none of this on record, Pia," Isha said linked her fingers together over her knees, "Fabricate a file, maybe "S'anra" is having difficulty with a superior officer and doesn't know how to cope, its a common enough name and the Elements know that half of the younger ones cannot follow a simple order these days. Make something up, there cannot be a blank record for them to find that would point towards me."
"Very well, I can arrange that." Pia agreed knowing if she did not then she wouldn't be able to help this lady. It was as plain as the nose on her face who this lady actually was but the situation demanded the utmost patient confidentiality and it was the first priority that any patient coming for help had the right to that protection.
"It was the Cardassian Ambassador," Isha said not blinking, "I am the Romulan Ambassador. It was in my own embassy, in my own office. He came there to threaten me, nothing out of the ordinary in that, there is always a degree of tension between ambassadors, the exchange of words that hide their real meaning, my embassy is bigger than your embassy, you know the sort of thing. I did say something rather emasculating, I must admit." the corner of Isha's lip twitched very slightly at the memory, everything was going normally until then. "That was when the rules changed, he grabbed me and threw me into the wall, twice I think, and threatened to kill me. The next thing I knew he hurled me across the room and I fell. I just let him do it, no struggle, nothing. I stayed down while he did this to me snivelling like a beaten slave."
Pia was shocked but her professionally acquired and perfected art of keeping a straight, impassive *Counsellors' face* saved her from showing it.
"I think, S'anra, if I were attacked in that manner, I would have done the same. It sounds like basic self-preservation to me. I presume the Cardassian Ambassador is not a small man," she offered, trying to stay as neutral as possible given her inner outrage at hearing that this delicately built, elegant lady should have been brutalised in such a menacing manner.
“He is not,” Isha said stating a simple fact, “I thought he just wanted to frighten me at first, something that I am sure he is thrilled to have achieved, but now I am not so sure that was all.” Isha recalled the zealous fury in his eyes, as though he had chosen to blame her for all the troubles that had befallen Cardassia … she dismissed the image with a blink.
As her retina cleared Isha continued to stare at the woman unable to imagine what it was like to be caught between worlds; just like Doctor Adams the counsellor seemed to favour her Bajoran half, it was that, perhaps that caused Isha to choose to address her by her first name. “Pia, we have a saying - So the Praetor, so the Empire – it is one that in varying forms runs down through society, through Houses, through regiments, through all organised structures at every level of society – the meaning is the same though. The leader is a figurehead, the embodiment of honour, passion, strength and discipline. It applies to embassies too. An ambassador who cannot defend herself is weak and if my people on this station and beyond learn of this, I am undone, as are my Houses.”
"Could your House or staff consider you weak just because you are smaller and less physically powerful than an assailant?" Pia was confused. "I wonder, if you had fought him and died at his hand, should that have been better? I know some Bajorans who would have said yes but it's not the individual battles but the whole war that must be won in the end. A race of martyrs is a short-lived one, surely?"
Having spoken Pia realised that was a comment and she wasn't supposed to make personal observations. However, she might perhaps justify it as a question that would tell her, and more importantly Isha... er.... S'anra.... believed of the reaction she had experienced.
”You may use my name, just ensure that the file is ‘S’anra’s’” Isha said with what may have been a fleeting smile then she pushed her interlinked fingers more tightly together and continued. “That he could find me in a position where he could make such an attack speaks of weakness, if I cannot protect myself then I should surround myself with those who can: that is my responsibility and I failed it. I can blame no-one for the consequences but myself. Who leaves their borders unprotected but a fool?” Isha asked rhetorically. “Pia, if he had wanted me dead I would be, whether I had fought or not. He wants me afraid,” Isha said apparently finding the stretch of dark fabric over her knees very interesting. “I may have been shaken but I will not stand down,” Isha said raising her gaze in a cold and defiant emerald blaze.
"Have you ever found yourself in a situation before that you could compare to this?" Pia had a sort of remote instinctive feeling hovering on the horizon of her thoughts. She couldn't explain why she had asked that, but it seemed something they both should consider and if necessary dismiss.
“One receives death threats from time to time,” Isha said, “Though they are less often delivered in person … in the past there have been one or two men who have had difficulty accepting my position whether through a difference in House tradition, or the simple inability to view someone with no military background as a superior. Quite recently, and in the past, yes,” she admitted, "though they have resorted to violence only when I pushed them to it," Isha told her, "one can readily shrug off a physical threat once the moment has moved on."
"Perhaps...... as we do with a lot of traumatic experiences" Pia agreed. "But tell me, if you are expected to surround yourself with those who could protect you, how can you be blamed if they let you down?" she asked, looking curious.
Isha’s superiors wanted the consulate to be open, she was supposed to show that the Stelam Shiar could be approached and could be trusted; she had been following their orders, or if she was honest, stretching them so that there was not enough of a presence to keep her confined.
“I have improved my arrangements,” Isha said, though she suspected that t’Merek would be none too pleased with her if she discovered that the ambassador, less than a day after charging t’Merek to improve security at the consulate had slipped out of the ‘back-door’ with only a Type 1 phaser hidden at the small of her back for protection, its presence entirely concealed by the fall of her tunic.
“Pia, I have spent most of my life surrounded by tight security, and it is a fact that someone determined will always be able to find a way to penetrate the tightest cordon,” Isha told the counsellor, thinking how Rh’vaurek had found a chink in her husband’s measures to protect her, how Nniol had undermined and abused her in the heart of her own home, and how they had both believed themselves to be fully justified in their actions. Was this really any different?
“It is my hope that Getal has made his point,” Isha said with little conviction in her tone, “if so I will be careful not to push him so far in future, to do so would be to invite a repeat of the incident, but if this is not over I want to be able to face him on my feet, not on my knees. My people do not put great store in counsellors, one is expected to deal with one’s own problems but I have a great friend who I know would advise me to seek help with this …” Isha was getting close to articulating what she saw to be the crux of her problem, and she needed to find the root from which it had grown. “Pia, every time something like this has happened, I feel as though I am being punished for something, that I deserve it, and that I do not have the right to hit back.”
"Whyever would you feel that way? Do you recall any point in your life when you were told or felt that you'd been so bad you would be punished in the future?" Pia asked.
Isha laughed, the sound liquid like a pebbled brook in sunlight, “I’m hardly a rebel,” she said, “When one’s mother is both a parent and one’s hru’Hfrih one does as one is told, it is expected. Oh I’ve had the occasional stern talking to but I did nothing that was so awful that …” Isha paused, the smile that accompanied her laughter abruptly falling from her face. She reached for the glass of water and sipped watching the surface ripple as she placed it down again – how could she have forgotten that?
TBC....
OFF:
A JP between:
Ambassador Isha t'Khellian
NPC by Louise
Trying to put her head in order
and
Asst. Counsellor
Ensign Pia Rimmec
(NPC'd by jools)