Title: Contradictory Calling
Author: Kathy Rose
Rating: PG
Codes: R, S
Category: Drama/friendship
Spoilers: Season 3 slightly
Summary: Hoshi finds out something about Malcolm that he'd kept secret
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to someone else, etc., etc., etc. I'm not making any money, I'm just having fun with the characters. Wish I'd thought of them first.
Author's Note: I've done a lot of fluff lately and felt it was time for a more serious, introspective piece. Any suppositions about the characters' beliefs in this story are my own. Thanks, PJ, for encouraging me to write this.
Hoshi was tired as she left sickbay, but there was one last thing she needed to do before she headed for her cabin and called it a night.
She shook her head as she walked down the corridor. She'd double-checked the Rilani's protocol information after they'd returned from what had to have been one of the worst first contact missions to date. At least she had assured herself that she hadn't overlooked anything. There was nothing in the information that would have prepared them for what had happened.
It had started out like a typical first contact. Shuttlepod One had landed on the planet and the Enterprise crewmembers had disembarked to be greeted by the Rilani dignitaries.
Then, with no warning, several other Rilani brandishing clubs had rushed them. Hoshi herself had taken a tremendous hit on her forearm when she'd blocked one of them as he came at her.
Jon had gone down with his assailant, their blows knocking each other out. T'Pol, as would be expected, had handled herself well, taking out two attackers before a third had clubbed her from behind.
Malcolm, naturally, was the only one who hadn't been surprised. His suspicion and alertness in new circumstances had allowed him to not only efficiently defend himself but protect Jon after he'd fallen.
Clemson from xenobiology hadn't been so lucky. The mild-mannered scientist had been hit hard, his skull fractured. Phlox still didn't know if he would pull through.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Rilani dignitaries had approached Hoshi and Malcolm - the only two left standing - to congratulate them on their prowess in defending themselves. Many of their visitors often lost entire landing parties, and they were impressed that no one from Enterprise had been killed outright.
The Rilani admired courage and strength but had twisted them into a perversity of what those attributes should be, with the result being that life had little value on their planet.
Hoshi had ministered to Jon, T'Pol, and Clemson as best she could on the flight back to Enterprise. As Malcolm had grimly piloted the shuttlepod, she had snuck glances at him. She could sense an anger in him, not at the situation, but at himself.
If he didn't learn how to deal with that, it was going to burn him out one of these days.
Arriving at his cabin door, she took a deep breath, pushed the chime, and waited. When there was no answer, she pushed the chime again.
Her finger had barely left the button when the door slid open. Malcolm gazed at her through tired eyes.
"Can I help you, Hoshi?" he asked wearily, running a hand down his rumpled uniform in a futile effort to smooth out the wrinkles.
Now that she was face to face with him, Hoshi fought the urge to say she'd come back later, that she didn't mean to disturb him. Normally she didn't have the least bit of trouble reaching out to comfort her friends, but Malcolm... Well, despite knowing Malcolm for more than three years now, she really didn't know him at all.
She was trying to make sure he was OK, she told herself. The worst he could do would be to tell her to go away.
"Actually, I was wondering if we could talk?" she said, letting her inflection rise on the last word and giving him the option of telling her no.
He stared at her, his brow furrowing. Then he shrugged and stepped back to allow her entry.
The lighting in his cabin was low and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. Malcolm closed the door behind her and moved away. At his desk, he picked up something that caught the lamplight and made glittering reflections dance on the bulkhead. She heard a glassy, clinking sound before he put the object in one of the desk drawers.
Surely she hadn't seen what she thought she saw.
As he shut the drawer, Malcolm turned to face her, and she knew that he was aware she had been watching him put away whatever it was.
"So," he said, ignoring the question in her curious gaze. "What did you want to talk about?"
Hoshi moved to sit on the edge of his bed. "I wanted to know how you were doing."
"Doing?" he repeated dully. "How do you think I'm doing?"
"Well, it was a pretty rough first contact today..."
"...and one of our crewmates might die," he said.
The flat, matter-of-fact tone he used worried Hoshi more than his usual self-recrimination. She didn't say anything, just sat watching him, waiting for him to go on.
He sighed and pulled out the desk chair and sat down.
"You'd be great at interrogations, did you know that?" he said, running a hand through his hair. "You don't have to say anything, just look at a person and they'll spill their guts."
"So spill," she prodded.
He looked away. "You know I hate it, Hoshi. Clemson is seriously injured. The captain and T'Pol were hurt. I need to check on them after-." He cut off his own words, then continued in a low voice. "I couldn't do anything to prevent it. It's just luck that you weren't hurt as well."
It was Hoshi's turn to sigh. Here we go, she thought.
"The captain and T'Pol are fine. They were released from sickbay about an hour ago," she said gently. "Phlox still doesn't know if Clemson will make it. ... I came by because I thought it might help you to talk about what happened."
A crooked smile graced his lips as he looked at her. "I appreciate your concern, Hoshi, but it's not necessary. I have my own ways of dealing with it."
"Bottling it up inside isn't going to help," she said.
He murmured something.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't hear that."
"I don't keep it bottled up inside." He took a deep breath and looked away. "I...give it to God."
His eyes flicked back to her and he saw her dubious look. "That's how I deal with it," he said. "I give all my frustration, anger and disappointment to God."
"I didn't realize you were religious," Hoshi said.
Malcolm snorted. "No one does. It's very private and personal."
"I mean," she went on, "of all the people on board, if anyone asked me, you'd be the last person I'd say had religious tendencies." She immediately gasped at her tactlessness and put her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"
Malcolm smiled at her. "There's no need to apologize. Just because I've told you I believe in God doesn't mean you have to treat me any differently than you have before."
"So, when I came by, you were..."
Following her gaze to the desk drawer, he nodded. "Praying."
He reached over and opened the drawer. Pulling out the rosary she'd glimpsed earlier, he handed it to her.
"It's beautiful," Hoshi said. The rosary was made of beads of deep green glass strung on a delicate cord, with the crucifix fashioned of silver.
"It was my grandmother's," he said.
Glancing up at him, she said, "I didn't realize you were Catholic. I mean, you're British..."
"Yes, I am. But my mother's side of the family is Irish. And Ireland, as you may or may not know, is still a bastion of the Catholic faith. It's caused some problems in my family."
"Oh?" Hoshi prompted. Malcolm rarely talked about his family. This was indeed a rare insight into his private life.
"When a Catholic marries a non-Catholic, as my mother did with my father, it is with the understanding that any children coming from that union will be raised Catholic." Malcolm laughed but there was no humor in it. "Yet one more bone of contention between my father and me."
"I had no idea," Hoshi murmured as she fingered the well-worn beads.
"Do you know that at one time I considered entering the priesthood?" he said. At Hoshi's astonished stare, he laughed, and this time she could hear genuine amusement. "It was for all the wrong reasons, of course, the most important one being that it would irritate my father no end."
Hoshi grinned. She could see Malcolm doing something like that out of spite. She might not know much about his family, but she did know that Malcolm didn't get along with his father.
She handed the rosary to him and he leaned back in his chair to return it to its place in the drawer.
"Don't underestimate prayer," he told her as he closed the drawer. "It's a very powerful force."
Hoshi shifted on the bed. She couldn't believe how open Malcolm was being with her. It must be a measure of how upset he'd been today. And yet, despite his surprising revelation, she couldn't reconcile what he'd just told her with the man himself.
He was the tactical officer, in charge of the armory as well as security aboard Enterprise. She wasn't that familiar with the Catholic faith, but wasn't there something about turning the other cheek? And taking another life was most definitely wrong. Somehow, that didn't mesh with the fact that Malcolm, in the line of duty, could be called upon to kill.
There was that time when the captain had ordered him to fire upon and destroy the unarmed Xindi listening post. She remembered the disbelief she'd seen on Malcolm's face at the captain's order, but he'd gone ahead and done it.
Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face because Malcolm drew his chair closer to where she sat on the bed.
"I believe it's wrong to take another's life," he said in a deadly serious tone. "But I also believe there are times, during the course of my duty to protect those lives for which I am responsible, I may be required the take the lives of others."
He gazed into her eyes, and Hoshi wondered if he was looking for her understanding or approval. Some of her doubt must have lingered, because he leaned back, his eyes losing their focus.
"Let me explain it this way," he said. "I believe life is sacred. God gave us life, and we should value and protect it. No one has the right to take away the life that God has given us. There may be times when others threaten our lives. In those instances, it is entirely possible that, in protecting our lives, others will die."
Hoshi swallowed. "It seems hard to balance one with the other."
"Indeed it is," he replied. "Sometimes I don't think I can. That's where prayer comes in."
He opened the desk drawer again and took out the rosary. His fingers slid down the cord until they were midway around the circle of beads.
"I was halfway through the Sorrowful Mysteries when you came by," he said.
"Mysteries?"
"There are certain things to think about, reflect on, when you recite the rosary," he said. "They're called mysteries. The Sorrowful Mysteries include Christ carrying the cross, and being nailed to it, and dying. There are five mysteries in each set, one for each decade of the rosary."
"Decade?" she asked curiously.
He smiled. "I forget you didn't grow up with this. A decade is the ten Hail Marys which are recited for a particular mystery."
He lapsed into silence, fingering the beads. The contrast between the fragile glass beads and Malcolm's strong, capable hands struck Hoshi as particularly appropriate of the strange dichotomy of the man.
"You know," she said, wondering if she should even broach this subject, "I would think that being out here in space, seeing so many strange and unexplainable things, would be a serious threat to your faith. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any reason for the way things happen."
Once again he looked at her and smiled. "For some, perhaps. But for me, it's the opposite. I know there will always be things we don't understand." He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to speak. "Let me finish. We can keep trying to understand and learn. That's our nature. But there will be times we can't understand, no matter how hard we try. You have to accept there are things that can never be explained. That's where faith is important, and prayer helps center you and calm you."
He stood, the rosary dangling from his hand as he walked over to the viewport. Hoshi could see he was holding one bead between his thumb and forefinger as if marking his place where she had interrupted him.
"How can you look at all that," he said, indicating the stars outside the window, "and not believe there is a God?"
Turning back to her, his face in shadow, he said earnestly, "And so I do my duty, protecting others' lives the best I can, because that's what I'm good at. Even if I can't comprehend why some things happen."
Hoshi sat on the bed, humbled that he had told her all this. She felt oddly comforted - and she had been the one to seek him out to comfort him.
"I ought to go," she said, getting to her feet. "I'll let you get back to what you were doing."
She started for the door, but Malcolm's voice stopped her.
"You're welcome to stay, if you wish," he said.
She turned back to him. "I don't want to intrude..."
"It wouldn't be an intrusion."
She hesitated, then nodded and moved to sit on the bed again.
As Malcolm began reciting a Hail Mary, she found herself thinking that maybe she had helped not only him but herself. Sometimes it helped to tell someone your beliefs, if only to reaffirm them for yourself. The steadiness she sensed in him now was an indication of that.
As for herself, she had gained a new appreciation for the quiet strength of this man of contradictions.
The End