Still no news.
High summer in England, and Hoshi was learning all over again exactly why the British weather was their conversational stock-in-trade.
High summer, and it was raining.
'Flaming June', indeed. Though May was hardly out, and maybe a few more weeks might see things improve. Due to her advancing pregnancy she was usually warmer than was comfortable, but even with her additional little heat-source aboard it was feeling chilly in the house. She eased herself into a comfortable armchair with a bulky cushion placed to provide additional support for her back, and wondered if it was worth putting the heating back on. It wasn't as if they couldn't afford it, but the old building's thick walls were an excellent insulator; within a few hours the place would become as hot as an oven, and then she'd have to open the doors and windows and she'd be back to Square One.
For once, she had the house to herself. Charles had been taken for a walk by his Granny Mary and Grandpa Stuart, and he would probably spend the afternoon at the Reeds' place, being returned washed and dressed in his pajamas just before bedtime. It had already been suggested that he might stay overnight occasionally, sleeping in his father's old bed, but she wasn't quite ready to give permission for that yet, though she would have been hard put to it to state exactly why. It was absurd to say that she felt as though he was some kind of 'lucky charm' she was reluctant to let out of her sight, but she was perfectly ready to admit to herself that as he was beginning to lose the rounded facial features of early childhood a resemblance was starting to appear that twisted a knife of love and fear in her breast every time she glimpsed it.
The vid-link on the table beside her chirruped, and she keyed 'accept incoming call', though no Starfleet logo appeared on the monitor.
"Hoshi!" Japan was nine hours in advance of England; it was tea-time there, and several of the family had apparently been invited to share the evening meal, for it was a crowded table that appeared on the video feed. The assorted cries of greeting were consequently so loud that she turned the volume down hurriedly, but then had to turn it up again as her mother and father commandeered the screen.
English was now her first language, but she had been reared in a naturally bilingual house and the ties of her ancestry were strong. It felt natural and comforting to fall back into the rapid, colloquial speech of her own country and her own town, talking and laughing and promising to come on a long visit when the baby was born; after the war….
After the war. After the war, after the war; everything boiled down to after the war. How blithely they all spoke of it, the future after the war, as though the Romulan invasion were a minor inconvenience that must be dealt with before normal service was resumed.
But definitely they would visit, after the war; maybe in the spring, when the cherry blossom made Kyoto's Maruyama Park into a paradise. For centuries the trees there had been cherished, their oceans of fragile pink and white flowers a testament to the renewal of life and hope. After the conversation was ended she shut her eyes and imagined herself and Malcolm in the park, seated at one of the benches to eat beneath the laden branches, with a baby nestled in a sling at his chest and he and Charles making a competition of reaching up to catch the falling petals; laughing as the scraps of white lace slid between their snatching fingers, transient and insubstantial as happiness ….
Inside the mound of her abdomen, the baby squirmed. Sherrie Jessa Sato-Reed kicked less than Charles had done at this stage, but she was an inveterate wriggler. On several occasions Hoshi had taken recordings of the surface of her belly heaving and undulating as though she'd swallowed a bag of snakes, but each time she'd reviewed the footage and decided she didn't want her husband put off for life. So only occasional scan photographs and a verbal account accompanied tales and photographs of his son's daily activities and made up the contents of a diary she recorded and transmitted to Starfleet for onward transmission when communications allowed – messages from home were important in keeping up morale, and though she knew better to expect anything in return (Intrepid was now on active service, and maintaining comms silence wherever possible to prevent unfriendly ears gaining information as to her position and movements), she felt that she was reaching out to her husband in the only way left to her.
It was nearly six months since he'd kissed her and left. There was so much else she could have included in the messages: her need of him, her loneliness without him, her fear for him. It had been simplicity itself for her to read that Trip had been withholding information in his last call to her. As high in the ranks as he was, it was impossible not for him to have access to a great deal of information that was not released to the media.
She was grateful – honestly grateful – that Trip made the effort to call her when he could; it was too easy to imagine that he was trying to cram thirty-six hours' worth of work into every twenty-four right now. Things between the two of them were still a mite awkward (though she hoped and believed Malcolm hadn't noticed anything different when they met up), so it was extra credit to him that he still found the time to check up on her. At a guess, he was keeping a promise extracted before Intrepid left the solar system, though she thought he'd have done it anyway. But she wondered whether he was even aware at all of just how much information he communicated without a single word being uttered.
War.
Sooner or later, the invasion would come. Malcolm too had tried to keep the worst of his fears from her, but when they'd married she'd taken up the most testing linguistic trial of her life – decoding her husband's often cryptic communication style, which nevertheless contained so much nonverbal subtext. If the demands of Starfleet under threat of invasion by the Romulan Empire had been more moderate, she'd have been an expert in it by now; as it was, she pegged herself as 'reasonably fluent'. And however high the wall Malcolm tried to build around his inner thoughts and feelings, she knew that he lived in terror – not for himself, but for her and their children.
Oh, Malcolm, where are you now?
The baby had quieted down, and she ran a hand gently across the distended skin, feeling the bump beneath that was probably a heel or an elbow.
Sherrie Jessa.
The first name was obviously in honor of her husband's dearly-loved aunt who had done so much to support them both in those terrible days after the return to Earth, when Malcolm was committed to what was essentially a mental home and she herself was struggling with new motherhood.
The second…. Now the second was more problematic.
Malcolm claimed that during the period of his 'absence' from Enterprise he had been somehow 'transported' to another world, where he had lived for a time among a primitive tribe. He had been taken under the wing of the tribe's healer, a young woman named Jessa, and it had been thanks to her that he survived a 'trial by ordeal' with the tribe's resident stallion, which they held in enormous reverence.
At first understandably skeptical as to whether this had actually happened or whether it was the extraordinarily detailed product of some form of hallucination, Hoshi had become convinced that it had actually happened. (Phlox, too, believed that it had, and after detailed investigation apparently Starfleet had also accepted it as the probable truth.) What sealed the deal for her, of course, was hearing him speak the language he had supposedly learned there. As far as she knew, he spoke no languages fluently other than his own, though he had a smattering of rather disreputable Spanish from Em and had been heard to curse in several others when he thought nobody was listening. But now he had quite a reasonable grasp of another – one that bore no relation to any she had ever heard. As soon as she had absorbed the basics and run it through all the available linguistics databases she realized it was, indeed, unique; it was equally obvious to her that he did not speak it as well as a native would have done, struggling to reproduce a number of sounds that did not come easily to him. But it was a distinct language with identifiable grammatical structure and logical verb forms, and he clearly both spoke and understood it, though he said that he had never met anyone who would teach him to write it – writing being apparently regarded as a quasi-magical art by 'The People'.
Having come to believe in his visit to that mysterious world, she was naturally intensely interested in his adventures there. But although Malcolm was always willing to talk about it, he probably didn't realize she was perfectly well aware that whenever he did so she was receiving a carefully edited version.
During their talks on the subject, her husband would go into a wealth of detail about almost anyone in the village. Had she been a skilled artist, Hoshi could practically have painted a portrait of Briai, the tribe's chief, or of Atreh, his son. Even relatively minor characters in the tapestry of the village were painted in with deft dabs of the brush; as a tactical officer, Malcolm had an eagle eye for detail. But doubtless he fondly imagined that his failure to speak in anything other than the loosest, vaguest terms of the woman who had been his savior and constant companion disguised the fact that he had cared about her – and cared deeply.
Hoshi was a realist. Malcolm was no monk, and for all his desperate attempts to tiptoe around every reference to his actual relationship with Jessa, he had been unable to completely conceal the fact that he knew she had been in love with him. In the early months of his recovery back on Earth, however, it would have been foolishness to have pressed him for more information than he felt able to give voluntarily; and by the time he seemed to have come to some kind of terms with his 'disappearance' during the hunt for the Xindi, their own blossoming relationship had made her reluctant to raise the specter of his association with another woman.
The brutal truth was that Malcolm and Jessa had probably become lovers at some point. But it was hard to be too self-righteous about that when she herself had turned to Trip Tucker for comfort, believing Malcolm to be dead. During his account, he had said repeatedly (and, she believed, honestly) that he'd believed that Enterprise and all the rest of his 'real life' was lost to him. Was his 'infidelity' really any different – any worse –than her own?
So she'd reasoned, and on a logical plane it made sense. However, logic – especially on the days when her hormones ran rampant – didn't always save her from occasional surges of jealousy. What had this unknown Jessa looked like? Had she been some big-breasted beauty to haunt a man's dreams? Malcolm usually slept like the dead, but now and again he muttered in his sleep. Even her trained linguist's ear had never picked out a word of that other language, or anything to even suggest he might be thinking of that unknown Other Woman, but still on the bad days the 'green-eyed monster' gibbered over her shoulder. Malcolm was hers now, body and soul, but by his own account he'd been returned here with as little volition as he'd had in his departure.
But if he'd had the chance to choose–?
The vid-link chimed again, making her jump almost out of her skin. As she twitched around to stare at the monitor – for a moment she could hardly remember where she was – the familiar yellow arrowhead on a blue background flipped onto the screen.
Trip had called earlier. He never called twice in one day; he didn't have the time.
Her heart leaped into her mouth. She put a hand protectively on her belly (the gesture had become habit with her now), feeling the baby jerk as though startled by the sound as well.
Her fingers were shaking so much she almost missed the 'Accept' key altogether.
"Hoshi?" It was Trip. There were noises in the background: shouts and screams and whoops. His haggard, weary face was printed with joy. "Hoshi, they did it! The Romulans! They beat 'em off! We won!"
"Casualties?" She was happy, of course she was happy, but the one word, the most important word, the only word, jumped from between her lips.
The light in his eyes died, and she hated herself. "It cost us. We lost a hell of a lot of ships."
"Intrepid."
He nodded miserably. "She's … she's on the list. Hoshi, I…"
"I know, Trip." She swallowed, fighting down the tears. "He was always honest about the risks."
"No, wait up a minute!" She saw the movement of his arm as though he went to grab her across subspace. "Hoshi, don't … look, don't give up on him, right? They'll be goin' through the wreckage, searchin' for survivors. And you know and I know, Malcolm's a survivor."
They were teetering on the edge of the crevasse of Look What Happened Last Time, and she couldn't deal with it, not now. But maybe this was the only possible time to deal with it, because so far neither of them had dealt with it at all, and nothing had been solved and nothing had healed, and their friendship was worth more than that.
"I know that. Look, Trip, what hap– what we did, I'm through feeling guilty about it. If we'd known he was still alive it wouldn't have happened, but we didn't know, and that's the end of it. I knew you weren't in love with me and you never would be, and I was … I just wanted to hold someone. I don't blame you and I don't think Malcolm would either."
"Did he know?" He looked so alarmed that Hoshi almost laughed, and then didn't. For all his rallying words, Trip had used the past tense. In his heart he believed Malcolm was dead.
"The honest truth? I'm not sure." She stared out across the rain-washed garden. The clouds were weeping for Malcolm, weeping, weeping… and what was she to say to Charles? How long do you wait, hoping against hope, until there no longer is any hope? "Once or twice, odd things he said … and you know, I don't think he was faithful to me either. Maybe he was trying to find some way to tell me that, and let me know he was okay about us." The tears so long denied were now spilling over. "I've got to go, Trip. Thank you, for letting me know."
"Hoshi, listen, don't … this hasn't gone to the media yet. Starfleet have got to put together the official announcement."
"What do you think Aunt Sherrie's going to do, phone the BBC to complain her nephew's Listed As Missing?" She caught herself too late; this was wickedly unjust to Trip, who could well have earned himself an official reprimand for giving her the news early. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…."
"It's okay." His tone was gentle. "'Soon 's I hear anything, I'll be in touch. One way or the other. They'll be puttin' together the casualty lists now, I've got contacts out there. I'll jackass my way all the way up to Jon if I have to.
"Now, you look after yourself and the baby, you hear? 'Cause he cares about you, Hoshi, he cares about you and the kids more than anything in the world, and he's gonna be comin' back to you."
"I will. 'Bye, Trip."
"See ya, Hoshi." The connection closed.
Feeling the bulk of her ever-increasing girth, she levered herself out of the chair and walked across to the window. It looked out across the small orchard on this side. From a branch of one of the stoutest trees hung a wooden swing that Malcolm had put together; she had swung on it that first day, squealing as he mischievously pushed her higher and higher, dislodging showers of petals from the blossom overhead. It was motionless now, soaking wet and dripping, and this year's petals had long since fallen into the grass and rotted away. All of the trees stood in mournful silence, bowed under the steady rush of the rain.
