Past Prologue

Posted on 26 Mar 2014 @ 1:23pm by Lieutenant Teth Miir & M'Ressa

4,433 words; about a 22 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo, Deck 3, Crew Quarters 03-1305
Timeline: MD 1, 0630

ON:

It was morning, though it was impossible to tell by looking out the window. Teth had set a small table for tea and adjusted the lights in his quarters to simulate early morning light. He had also set aside a small plate of pastries recommended to him by a Betazoid patient.

He was anxiously awaiting M'Ressa's arrival. Since the ship left spacedock, they had made a habit of meeting each day while Teth's well meaning but overbearing room mate was on duty. He was dressed in civilian clothes. Marine cargo pants and a gray tshirt. He was definitely channeling human influences for his choice of fashion.

He decided to tend to the many, many plants he had mounted in hydroponic planters on the previously empty wall next to the bunks. They contained a variety of colorful and fragrant herbs and flowers. He had brought them with him from the USS Glasgow, and from Starfleet Medical before that. He'd been tending to the plants for years, occasionally harvesting them, but mostly just feeding a fascination with his ability to create life from such small things as seeds and spores.

M'Ressa had taken to wearing a full length romper when she was off duty. The ship was cooler and a bit damper then her place in Africa but certainly warmer then San Fransisco in winter. Activating the doors chime function, M'Ressa waited for Teth to invite her in. She was a few minutes late but not incredibly so.

"Enter!" he, said as he lit a tea light beneath the glass kettle on the table.

The first thing M'Ressa always noticed when she stepped into Teth's quarters was the smell of growing greenery from the wall of his quarters. It was a welcoming change from the sterile smell of the rest of the ship.

As M'Ressa walked in, Teth grabbed her, lifting her off the floor, and gave here an almost rib shattering hug, spinning her around once before releasing her, hoping he hadn't just offended he with such a sudden and overzealous expression of affection.

"Sorry." he said meekly, "I was just happy to see you. You look very nice today, are you dressing for an occasion?"

"Because I can?" M''Ressa remarked as Teth put her back down on her feet. She ran one digit down his face and neck before she stood up on her tip toes and gave Teth a peck on the cheek.

"How was shift yesterday?"

"You know, the usual." he said as he poured two cups of tea. "I got to listen to people talking at me about their problems for several hours. Though I am still mostly just doing yearly psych evaluations. How has it been in the labs?"

"I think everyone is finally settling in. Some of the equipment was being testy with the overhaul but that's up to Operations & Engineering to fix. Otherwise the various experiments are being fired up again from shutdown over leave."

M'Ressa took a sip of the tea that Teth offered. She'd never drank tea before meeting Teth and she found the brew to be sitting well with her since she started drinking it. "Olsam behaving himself?"

Teth pulled out a chair from the small dining/work space in the room and sat down. At this point he hoped M'Ressa was comfortable enough around him to seat herself.

"About as well as I could hope. To be honest, I don't actually see much of him. He seems to sleep in sickbay most of the time which is... odd. I guess I've spent enough time in hospitals to happily never sleep on a biobed again."

M'Ressa nodded as she found a chair she could place near Teth. "Well his frequency of stalking seems to have gone quite dramatically the past few days." M'Ressa grinned at Teth. "He thinks I'm not noticing him but Bolians have a very distinct smell to them. I just pretended I don't see or hear him."

She chuckled. "I still don't quite understand what makes him tick, or why he seems to think I've got some ulterior motive for seeing you."

"I'm really not sure. I guess he's just... jealous? We managed to become very close friends since we met on Earth. My sister suggested that it might be some sort of latent sexual attraction, but I refuse to believe that for the sake of my own sanity."

He picked up one of the Betazoid pastries, it flakey and filled with some kind of whipped chocolate cream with chunks of actual chocolate mixed in. He wondered what the Betazoids would be eating with every meal had humans not introduced them to chocolate. Of course the chocolate he was serving wasn't real chocolate, as that tended to make members of his own species quite ill. But it was definitely a very good approximation from what he could tell.

"Whatever it is," M'Ressa commented while she took a bite of one of the pastries, "If it was anything other then amusing to observe him skulking around, I'd probably have him hauled before the CO."

"I'm surprised you don't." Teth said solemnly. "R'lara is usually a pretty good judge of character, though. What with the whole police thing. She is ten minutes older than me and has used that as an excuse to treat me as her subordinate. She would hate most of my friends and then, in the end she would be right about them. We could never get along when we were growing up, I probably should have listened to her more."

M'Ressa shrugged her shoulders. "Give him enough rope to hang himself, figuratively speaking of course." She glanced at her cup then back up at Teth. "I really hope your family approves of me. Your sister let me hold her kits so I suppose that counts for something."

"That counts for a lot. She doesn't trust people easily. Honestly, I think my entire family adores you." he grinned widely at M'Ressa, "I would love to meet your family one of these days, you know. Not that the opportunity is likely to present itself any time soon."

"I'm glad they approve. Maybe next shoreleave we can visit Ferasa. Probably won't get a chance to meet everyone tho as two of my sister's are also in Starfleet. It would take a big family event, like a bonding ceremony, to bring everyone back together in one place."

M'Ressa paused. "My older sister's are all bonded so that would mean me." M'Ressa knew what was implied in that statement but she hoped Teth knew her well enough to know that was merely a statement of fact, not some sort of implied push, even if deep down she did desire it if Teth was willing.

She took another bite from her pastry. "Interesting bunch my family. Father runs a shipping company. Mother was our clan mother until my oldest sister ascended. One sister is an engineer on a starship. And my twin sister, rebellious one that she is, decided to of all things, to become a marine sniper."

"You should introduce her to R'lara. She's a police sniper. They could get together and talk about shooting people." Teth laughed, ignoring the mention of bonding. He was still getting to know M'Ressa even though it felt like their relationship was moving at trans warp speeds.

"But in all seriousness, I would like to do that. Go to Feresa, I mean. It's been far too long since I've been there. I guess right before I joined Starfleet."

M'Ressa nodded. "I will take you to Ferasa next shoreleave." She grinned. "And no I'm not planning a shotgun wedding." She placed a paw on Teth's leg. "I'd never push you into something you're not ready for."

"And I appreciate that..."

Teth paused, his expression turning serious and concerned. He thought carefully about what he wanted to say next, as he did not want to give M'Ressa the wrong idea.

"I feel like we are moving too fast. Especially sexually. I enjoy being with you and I think we have great chemistry and I am so happy whenever I am with you. But everything is just moving so fast."

M'Ressa nodded. While things were progressing quickly she'd assumed, having no real baseline except for Teth, that this was normal.

"If you want to slow down, maybe take a step back, we can Teth." She frowned. "Is there something I should know? Your sister mentioned something when we were visiting but I didn't catch all of it. Some bad relationship or something?"

"She did?"

Teth's stomach started to shrink and turn into knots and he finally felt dizzy and extremely dehydrated. He sucked down the entire cup of much too hot tea, hoping it would make the situation feel less terrifying.

"Well, it was sort of complicated. Not really a relationship, exactly. At least not in retrospect." he skirted the actual issue at hand. Terrified that if she heard the whole story, she would run away. She would disown him and want nothing to do with him. After all, he would run away from himself if he could.

M'Ressa could sense the change in Teth when the subject came up. Subtle changes in his body language but also a shift in his scent. Caitians could sense the pheremone changes in each other as well as other species, and Teth was almost screaming fear at her. She waited till he put his cup down before she took his paw in both her own.

"Teth. You know I love you and would follow you to the ends of the Galaxy if you asked me to. I would do anything for you short of killing a sentient being, self-defense excepted. I'd even agree to bond myself to you and bear your kits if you asked me, tho I know we're not ready for that yet." She paused, immediately regretting the last part even as it rolled off her lips, ~Really hope he doesn't take that the wrong way.~

"I want to know about your past Teth. Our past makes us who we are and we can't change that. I know you're scared, probably worried I'll leave because your past is too scary for me to handle." She squeezed his hand. "I want to know about your past. I want to know why you are you. Only you can show me that."

Teth stared at his hand, now clasped into M'Ressa's. He felt nauseous when he tried to form the words to start the story. Where should he begin? His first day in that awful engineering course in the academy? The night he was stabbed through the neck and almost bled to death in the master bedroom of someone else's family home?

"I joined Starfleet when I was sixteen." he said after a long silence, he couldn't make eye contact with M'ressa so he just stared at his wall mounted plants and their glow of UV lights above them, "I was terrible at engineering. I was about to fail out of my intro to warp theory course. The professor offered to tutor me. We actually got along really well back then. He was half human, half romulan, very clean cut and friendly, he was 37 and probably six inches or so taller than me. He had a beautiful wife, a joined Trill and two cute young children with her. They always made me feel very welcome. I even watched the children for them on occasion for extra ECs."

He took his hand back from M'ressa and buried his face in it instead.

"I guess the first time it happened, I'd had alcohol. I had never tried alcohol before. I don't really even remember very much of that. Uh, he... had sex with me. I wasn't even really entirely conscious that time. Not the whole time, at least. And from there it turned into some kind of sick relationship with him blackmailing me while telling me how much he loved me and needed me. His wife took a position on Betazed and took the children with her and things got really bad. He became a lot more aggressive, if he had any frustrations in life, he would take them out on me. Our sexual relationship continued, but I was pretty much just cooperating out of fear. Not from the blackmail even, but that he might hurt me. He was very sadistic. Especially when we had sex, he would try to make things as painful for me as possible. But then he would feel bad and apologize. He would give me expensive gifts and tell me how wrong he was. He would tell me that he loved me, and... for some reason I loved him too. Even after all of that."

The whole thing had spilled out like a flood of broken memories and dreams. He clenched his teeth tightly before anything else escaped and waited for a response, any response, from M'Ressa.

M'Ressa wasn't sure what the proper Terran response was to a revelation like this but it certainly explained the stress she'd sensed in him. Leaning in close to Teth she wrapped her arms around the large cat and held him in her arms. What could you say to such a revelation?

Teth just sat there, letting her hold him, attempting to be soothing. He felt far too tense and agitated for her embrace to be especially helpful. And she didn't even know the half of it. He pushed M'Ressa away gently and started pacing his quarters.

"I went to confront him one night and break the whole thing off. He attacked me. The details really aren't important, but I ended up getting stabbed through the throat with a letter opener, I finally subdued him with a wrought iron lamp to the head. He went to a rehabilitation center and I just kept going to school."

He sat down on his bed and pulled the necklace from out of his shirt. A long titanium cable with a ring hanging from it. Inscribed in the wring, 'for my beloved'. It used to belong to Koran and as Teth ran the ring through his fingertips he wondered if he kept it as a trophy. Killers often kept trophies.

M'Ressa felt a bit hurt when Teth pushed her away, gently tho he did it. All she wanted to do was comfort him and she'd been rejected for trying to help. All she could do is watch Teth pace the room while he continued before sitting on his bed. She saw him pick up a little ring and play with it after he fell silent.

Way out of her league but wanting to help, M'Ressa approached Teth cautiously before crouching at his feet. "Teth?"

"What?"

He didn't divert his attention from the ring. He wondered what had happened to Koran's wife and daughter. The son worked at Utopia Planetia. He wondered if they ever miss him or wonder where he went. Or maybe they just didn't care at all and were glad he was gone. Even Starfleet barely bothered to look for him and gave up quickly.

M'Ressa was getting concerned, scared was a better word, at this point. Not for her own safety but for Teth's. She'd never seen him like this before and it wasn't where she wanted to be right now.

"Talk to me?"

He looked up at her, obviously irritated.

"What would you like me to say? This isn't exactly my favorite topic. That's why I did my best to just bury it."

"And I dragged it back out in the open." M'Ressa sat down beside Teth. "What that man did to you was horrible and I'm sorry for making you relive it." She placed a paw on his shoulder. "I really am sorry Teth."

He laughed, not knowing how else to respond, and then went silent. He stood up and went to the other side of the room, not exactly feeling comforted by her silent offer of physical contact.

"Were you aware that I have Borg implants?" he asked with a manic sheen to his eyes as he turned back to M'ressa.

"When I was even younger," he continued, his voice high and agitated, "I was attacked by a group of, I don't even know what, thugs I suppose? The investigation went nowhere. Severe brain and spinal damage and they put fracking Borg technology in my head."

He poured another cup of tea and drink the entire thing in one go, his hand shaking as he put the cup back down onto the table.

"I really don't want your pity, M'Ressa. I don't want anyone's pity. I am a lot stronger than that." he turned and stared into her eyes, "I made that man pay dearly for what he did. And if anyone else tries to pull anything like that again, I will make sure they pay for it as well. I was a child back then, but I am not one any more."

M'Ressa looked back at Teth from her spot on his bed, her emotions starting to cloud and roll over. "Pity is what you show a blind beggar on the outskirts of some godforsaken hell hole in the ass end of space." M'Ressa rose to face Teth, her anger begining to rise as did her. "I never wanted to offer you pity Teth. I honestly wanted to know more about you, about your past. You think I knew that you carried so much hurt inside? You think I knew you were raped by some asshole scum of human who deserves to die for what he did to you? You think I wanted to drag that out of you, to hurt you with it?"

"No." Teth replied, a little more calmly "I know that wasn't your intention and I am sorry for springing all of this on you. I shouldn't have told you about any of it. None of it matters any more. It's been over a decade and has no bearing on anything anymore."

M'Ressa backed down from Teth. As much as she could get up in people's face, she hated doing it, especially to someone she cared deeply about, like Teth. "No Teth. It's my fault for asking you about it. And it's better we got it out in the open now rather then later." She paused. "Relationships need open communication and understanding, not secrets and lies. You were open with me about your past. Now we can move forward and I have a choice to make. To accept you for who who are, past included, or to move on without you."

She stopped, looking up with Teth, an expression of what she hoped was love and affection. "What matters Teth is you are here, with me, today. I couldn't care less about the past."

Teth thought of all of the ways he could respond to that statement. All of them seemed insincere, some might even come across as being offensive.
He was skeptical of her. The hadn't even had a fight so far in their brief but intense relationship. Why was she still here? After all of that. So many had left for far less.

He managed a strained smile.

"I suppose your are right, for today. I care deeply for you, I just have never imagined a future with you. I have been pretty much anticipating my death at any time now and am making peace with that. Of course if that isn't the case, I figured I would find some way to sabotage our relationship because for some very odd reason I just always want to find new and creative ways of tormenting myself."

He paused for a moment in thought.

"And that isn't to say I don't want a future with you. I do. I just have been assuming it will never happen. Until now, at least."

M'Ressa looked up at Teth. "What changed?"

An entire range of emotions crossed Teth's face as he worked feverishly to try to put he reasoning into words.

"Ever since I joined Starfleet, I have been doing everything I can to get my family used to the idea of me simply not being around anymore. I think they will be perfectly fine, maybe even better off without me. But, I don't want to hurt you and... I really don't want to leave you behind."

"I really don't know what to say Teth." She responded. "I don't know what the future holds. Maybe we are meant to be together, maybe we aren't. I just don't want to be left behind picking up the pieces wondering what I could have done differently."

"Well... I'm honestly not sure what to tell you. Perhaps just that I will not be going anywhere."

M'Ressa nodded. She was fighting the urge to hug Teth but held back as she didn't want him to withdraw from her again. "I'm going to assume that means the implication that you were going to either be killed by forces unknown, or commit suicide is on hold?"

Teth nodded and gave a slight shrug.

"Yes, I suppose so. It isn't so much that I was actively planning on something like that, I just sort of assume I would die. Soon. Really, I could have gotten killed a few times during my trip to Vulcan alone. It's not like being a counselor is inherently dangerous, though. But it can be sometimes...."

Teth decided to stop talking, realizing that he was about to go on a diatribe about all of the times patients have tried to strangle, stab, electrocute, or otherwise cause him bodily harm or death. He just quietly returned to his seat and picked up one of the pastries he had left out. Examining it carefully before taking a bite out of it.

M'Ressa nodded, quietly sitting down in the chair beside him. The way this conversation had drifted, she wasn't sure what to make of Teth now. She couldn't deny she loved him, that much was certain, but how strong was that love in the face of what she'd just seen from Teth? That only M'Ressa could answer and at this point she wasn't certain.

One day at a time, one step at a time.

She lifted and glanced at her now empty cup before placing it back down on the table. "So..."

"Would you like more tea?" Teth said with diverted eyes and a small smile. "I can never tell if you actually like it or you just drink it to be polite. What do the real Caitians drink?"

"I would please." She smiled. "Terran tea reminds me of Meraka, which is made in a similar fashion. The homeworld has many similar drinks to Terran's, mainly made from native plant life."

M'Ressa ran her finger along the edge of her cup. "We also do have fluids similar to cow's milk, tho I'm allergic to them. Terran milk incidentally I am as well and it behaves like alcohol in my system. You saw that the evening we met."

Teth poured M'Ressa another cup, though the supply in the pot was dwindling quickly.

"I have never tried milk. Growing up, we ate a strictly vegan diet, and even after that... it doesn't seem appealing. I really just prefer actual alcohol."

"It has a soothing effect on our species, much like alcohol in moderation does for Terrans. I never really developed a taste for alcohol tho so my tolerance for it is quite low."

"Mine is probably a bit too high. The region of earth I grew up in is renowned for their drinking culture. Excellent engineers and biologists, though."

"Germany invented beer or something like it I understand? I know the Russians invented some sort of clear liquid they call Vodka." M'Ressa had tried Vodka once and it burned all the way down so it was among her least favorite drinks. Beer was okay but meh. Probably her favorite Terran drink was fruit cider, especially a dry apple made from apples grown in the dry western parts of North America.

"Vodka never agreed with me." She grinned at Teth.

"I guess I don't have many strong preferences. I hate Saurian brandy. It tastes like bile and I'm not sure how so many people enjoy it."

Teth looked at his watch and sighed heavily.

"I need to be going soon. I really hope you don't think..." the thought carefully about his next choice of words, trying to express his meaning concisely. "I appreciate you being so understanding. I was terrified when you started asking about what happened. I just hope you don't think differently of me now. It really is all dead and buried and behind me. But sometimes feelings or perceptions relating to those events crop up."

"You're still the handsome young cat I met in an elevator on Earth. But, I think I understand you a bit better now Teth, which means my perception of how you react to things is different. If anything, I think the better of you now that I know about your past."

He smiled, though it definitely felt empty. He stood there, fully exposed to what ultimately still felt like a stranger in so many ways. A fascinating and beautiful stranger, but still a stranger. He was used to being in her position. Polite and silently judging of someone else's life laid bare.

"Maybe next time you can tell me all of you most humiliating secrets."

"I have a few embarrassing stories from my childhood I could tell you sometime. Not sure about humiliating tho."

"Really, I hope for more cheerful conversation in the future."

Teth moved toward the door, the idea of engaging in any kind of physical contact with M'ressa at that moment, or anyone, was very unappealing. So he offered her a smile instead, hoping to not offend her in some way. He could never quite gauge her reactions.

"I'll see you later, I hope you have a nice day."

M'Ressa nodded. "I'll be in the labs as usual." She made her way to the door before turning back to Teth. "Thank you for tea as always."

Teth leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on her forehead.

"You are always welcome here." he said before turning and walking out the door.

OFF:


Lt. Teth Miir
Counselor
USS Galileo

&

M'Ressa
Biotechnologist
USS Galileo

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