See Part 1 for story information and disclaimers.
T'LORAH'S TALE - PART 3/3
(This is the final part and it takes place a few years after Part 2, and both Sam and T'Lorah are nearing their final Starfleet exams.)
Kathryn and Sam and walking down the street after Academy, holding hands and talking quietly.
"Why I am still fighting this blatant prejudice? It's such as uncivilised practice, and one that was eliminated in the years before the Klingon War. Why did the people of Earth allow it creep back in to society?"
"Because they're running scared. The Klingon are an unpredictable threat to their survival, and they fear their capabilities."
"I feel so happy on one side, Sam. On that side, we're nearing the end of our Academy days and closer to positions on starships. But I'm still so confused and sad. I miss my mother more than ever and father is sinking deeper and deeper inside his remorse - he can't even take care of himself anymore. The other day I found a holoprogram he'd been working on. I ran it myself and it was a hologram of my mother! He tried to move on without her, Sam, he really did. But recreating an imitation of her will not help him to progress forward with his life. Now he cries pathetically all the time. He's cold when the temperature is stable then in an instant he'll be sweating all over. I administer medicine that allows him to sleep - then he'll be out of it for days! And of course, we will be separated soon on different missions. Has it been worth it? I'm so tired of fighting for equality so mercifully - it's like I owe them something. But I'll never stop fighting it. I'll never let it beat me. Never."
"You're almost there, Kathryn! You've almost done it and you'll show everyone who ever doubted you. You will be the one to change them and make them start thinking that maybe, just maybe, they could have been wrong."
"But I'm still trying to come to grips with things that confused me when I was eleven! I haven't even spoken to a Klingon since I was ten years old. I don't know what Klingon habits I'm going to adopt or take after, what rituals I'm supposed to have performed. And everyday I train to work for the people who took away people I loved and everything that made sense. My mother spent her whole life attempting to suppress her Klingon side and closed herself off from people to prevent them from seeing it. I'm going to spend my life going after people, attempting to understand what it is I've suppressed."
He looked into her turbulent brown eyes that he had loved ever since she glanced up from her computer on his first day in Extension Engineering. He'd often comforted her through her depression but he'd still never seen her cry. It wasn't almost as if she couldn't - or wouldn't let herself.
"You've always known you wanted to fly Starfleet missions, right?"
"Always."
"Did your father convince you it was the best thing for you?"
"No, no. He was pushed into Starfleet by his family traditions - he wanted me to do whatever I wanted. I think he'd prefer it if I kept my feet on the ground. I tell you why I want it so badly. I want to fly away from here. I want to launch myself into the stars and fly far away from everything that holds me back, and maybe, just maybe I'll find someone like me. Someone who had been through the same things and we can talk for hours and hours, then I want to come back here - back to my homeworld - and find the person I want to be with for the rest of my life and live in peace amongst people who accept me for me."
"That's some dream, Kathryn. But if you can, I want you to change one thing."
"And that is?"
"Let me go with you… in case you never make it home to me."
He gently kissed her cheek, but suddenly she lurched forward in a state of shock.
"Excuse me! Excuse me - please wait, please!" Kathryn called in the direction of a creature just up ahead of them, as she ran up to him. It spun around to reveal just what she'd been too desperate to hope for. It was a Klingon. A Klingon being, here in San Francisco.
"I'm not here to listen to more of your ridicule, I am here on official business. Starfleet is aware of my presence. I am unarmed", croaked the Klingon.
"No it's not that. I am... I am Klingon, Sir, if I might just ask you a few questions. There is no information of the whole of Earth about your - our - race except a few battle histories and techniques at Starfleet. I just want to know about some cultural rituals if I might experience them - might I join the Klingon?"
She knew she was asking some deep questions that she could be seriously in trouble for but she was so comforted by his face that she could hardly hold back from hugging him - but she knew enough of Klingon personality traits to know that wasn't at all appropriate.
"I'm not sure I should be talking to you, you human."
"My grandmother was a full-blooded Klingon. My name is T'Lorah! I am Klingon, please you simply must believe me!"
The next thing she felt was not an overwhelming sense of relief as he began to explain everything she'd longed to understand for so many years as she had expected. It was a familiar blow to the back of the head and the harsh reality of the ground meeting her nose before and Sam's voice yell out in protest, and then everything faded into darkness.
* * *
"Ms Kathryn Paris."
Kathryn could hear a man's deep voice snarling at her from a long way off. She followed his voice instinctively, pulling herself out of unconsciousness. As if she suddenly emerged from a tunnel, she could focus on bright images around her. She felt she was being held up under both arms - she tried to move, but her legs were paralysed and felt as though every skerrick of energy had been zapped from her.
"Cadet Paris can you hear me?"
Kathryn managed a nod, before the Feds released her. She stumbled forward onto her knees and quickly realised she was positioned in front of the Starfleet Board once again. And just as before, she faced them alone.
"You are hereby resigned from the Starfleet Academy and forbidden from commencing there again until this business with the Klingon race is settled - either by war or an unconditional treaty - and we can trust you in the sky. You will be released into the custody of your father on the justification that you are the only family he has and he is in a frail state of health. You will be granted two weeks holiday from Earth each year on a local space station, where each morning you will required to present yourself to a Starfleet-approved space station official."
"What? No..." was all she could manage through the intense pain in her head. Suddenly it all seemed to melt away when she saw Admiral Janeway looking down on her, urging her to protest.
"Under what charge?"
"Federation security risk. Take her from the courtroom and release her into her father's custody."
The two men came forward and picked her up off the floor and led her towards the door.
"I would have been the best damn Captain you ever had!" Kathryn cried in anguish.
The Admiral signalled for her to be brought back and she was dropped on her knees again in front of the Board.
"I have no doubt you would have been Ms Paris, but one cadet is not worth risking Federation stability. Your brain is too interested in Klingon activities - you are a security risk to Starfleet."
"It is not a crime to want to understand one's body and one's feelings - that is the only reason I approached that, that, being." At this point she'd realised it had all been a plot to trap her. I would never betray my homeworld", she said, bitterly. "I have been emersed in Starfleet operations since I was four years old. I was even born on a Federation Starship."
"We have it on good authority that your brain is very Starfleet, supposed to be graduating top of your class, I hear."
"Yes Sir. I had been working towards this since before the Klingon War. I wanted to achieve top Starfleet honours, nothing less. I am no more Klingon than you, Admiral."
The few spectators and some Board members gasped quietly at her bold remark.
"You certainly have the academic talent and credentials to achieve your dream, Kathryn Paris. Just as your paternal ancestors have done before you. You have inherited their passion. However, it is not your head that will betray you. It is your heart and what it feels towards your maternal ancestors."
"Are you telling me I'm too Klingon to be human? Because I'm also too human to be Klingon. Neither culture allows for a median, and yet here I am. I am the median. You cannot deny it, I'm standing here in front of you!" Then, attempting to cool her temper and sound mature, "I would have served you honourably."
"Honour is a very Klingon word."
"Yes it is. And I learnt it from you and from my father and from the Academy."
"We are doing this to protect you, Kathryn. If they ever capture you they will use your heritage against you and the Federation. Better you no nothing."
Kathryn knew it was no use fighting the Board anymore. Tears began falling silently down her cheeks. It was an unfamiliar sensation that brought to the surface all her years of loneliness and isolation. Except that now she was more bewildered than ever, and her final hope for a normal existence lay in pieces all around her, invisible to those who had destroyed it.
"What will happen to me now, then?" she almost whispered.
"The sentence stands."
Kathryn nodded, the information slowly sinking in and dragging her down with it. "If it pleases the Board, may I solicit two amendments to the sentence?"
He conferred with the members beside him and looked behind for support.
"And they are?"
"That I be allowed to sit my finals and graduate from Starfleet Academy - in my correct finishing position and gain the rank of ensign - with the rest of my class. It is not my fault you did not remove me before now. I would like to complete the course. Of course, I will never fly mission with a Starship crew until your conditions are met."
"That is reasonable - we will consider it, and inform you at a later date."
"The second, is not an amendment, more a request."
"Continue."
"That if I ever marry a full-blooded human and our children have no defining Klingon characteristics, they will never be prosecuted as I have been and may pursue any career in any field with no limitations on rank."
"Also, your children must never have contact with a Klingon or one with a knowledge of Klingon culture, other than yourself, and you must not make them aware of your history, until such time as the current situation can be rectified. Do you concur?"
"That I do and I am grateful."
"Therefore I will uphold your request."
"Thank you."
"Release Kathryn Paris into her father's custody."
She had fought hard, but she had still lost the most important thing. They'd taken away her capacity to dream. She'd only ever had two dreams. To be a Starfleet Captain and to understand herself, both of which were now further away than ever.
* * *
Ensign Kathryn Paris smiled ruefully to herself. It was easy to admit that this was the happiest she'd been since her mother's death. Her fiancee gently pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. "I love you T'Lorah Paris", Sam whispered. And how she loved him to hear him speak her true name!
She glanced at her father who had begun the painful road to recovering from his grief - and was much better for it - but he was not perceptive enough to see through his daughter's false happiness. She, like her father, had only being going through the motions of life these last years - she had thrown herself into her study in an effort to blot out the pain and prevent anyone from getting too close. And after all that work, she was still a nobody.
Sam was flying his first long-range mission soon on a research vessel and as his wife, Kathryn had been permitted to go too, providing she was confined to their quarters and few other areas and forbidden to go near any controls. She could hardly believe they would be allowing her near a ship.
Even here, sitting in Sam's arms with her beloved father next to her and surrounded by their friends, no one understood the turmoil within her heart or the constant inner battle of her emotions. Her mother had struggled to come to terms with the same feelings, but at least she'd known of her heritage. Kathryn knew she'd be lucky to ever fly a mission, let alone make Captain. At least she'd wouldn't until people changed. Then, perhaps she could go by the name her mother gave her. As a human who had tried to forget her heritage and was held back because of it anyway, she couldn't perceive where she fit into the universe. She knew that the people, particularly one person, who could have eased her confusion, had been victims of a violent war that, in the end, had left no one.
No one anyway, except a partially Klingon girl who despite all appearances, was desperately alone.
"This is most strange, that she whom but even now was your best object, the argument of your praise, the balm of your age, the best, the dearest, should in this trice of time commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle so many folds of favour. Surely her offence must be of such unnatural degree that monsters it, or your-vouched affection fall into taint; which to believe of her must be a faith that reason without miracle should never plant in me."
- William Shakespeare, King Lear.
Well, there it is - my very first piece of fan fiction. It ended up being much longer than I thought. I really hope you enjoyed it - please review my story. I guarantee I'll read & review at least one of your pieces in return!
COPYRIGHT 1999 KATE DAVIS
T'LORAH'S TALE - PART 3/3
(This is the final part and it takes place a few years after Part 2, and both Sam and T'Lorah are nearing their final Starfleet exams.)
Kathryn and Sam and walking down the street after Academy, holding hands and talking quietly.
"Why I am still fighting this blatant prejudice? It's such as uncivilised practice, and one that was eliminated in the years before the Klingon War. Why did the people of Earth allow it creep back in to society?"
"Because they're running scared. The Klingon are an unpredictable threat to their survival, and they fear their capabilities."
"I feel so happy on one side, Sam. On that side, we're nearing the end of our Academy days and closer to positions on starships. But I'm still so confused and sad. I miss my mother more than ever and father is sinking deeper and deeper inside his remorse - he can't even take care of himself anymore. The other day I found a holoprogram he'd been working on. I ran it myself and it was a hologram of my mother! He tried to move on without her, Sam, he really did. But recreating an imitation of her will not help him to progress forward with his life. Now he cries pathetically all the time. He's cold when the temperature is stable then in an instant he'll be sweating all over. I administer medicine that allows him to sleep - then he'll be out of it for days! And of course, we will be separated soon on different missions. Has it been worth it? I'm so tired of fighting for equality so mercifully - it's like I owe them something. But I'll never stop fighting it. I'll never let it beat me. Never."
"You're almost there, Kathryn! You've almost done it and you'll show everyone who ever doubted you. You will be the one to change them and make them start thinking that maybe, just maybe, they could have been wrong."
"But I'm still trying to come to grips with things that confused me when I was eleven! I haven't even spoken to a Klingon since I was ten years old. I don't know what Klingon habits I'm going to adopt or take after, what rituals I'm supposed to have performed. And everyday I train to work for the people who took away people I loved and everything that made sense. My mother spent her whole life attempting to suppress her Klingon side and closed herself off from people to prevent them from seeing it. I'm going to spend my life going after people, attempting to understand what it is I've suppressed."
He looked into her turbulent brown eyes that he had loved ever since she glanced up from her computer on his first day in Extension Engineering. He'd often comforted her through her depression but he'd still never seen her cry. It wasn't almost as if she couldn't - or wouldn't let herself.
"You've always known you wanted to fly Starfleet missions, right?"
"Always."
"Did your father convince you it was the best thing for you?"
"No, no. He was pushed into Starfleet by his family traditions - he wanted me to do whatever I wanted. I think he'd prefer it if I kept my feet on the ground. I tell you why I want it so badly. I want to fly away from here. I want to launch myself into the stars and fly far away from everything that holds me back, and maybe, just maybe I'll find someone like me. Someone who had been through the same things and we can talk for hours and hours, then I want to come back here - back to my homeworld - and find the person I want to be with for the rest of my life and live in peace amongst people who accept me for me."
"That's some dream, Kathryn. But if you can, I want you to change one thing."
"And that is?"
"Let me go with you… in case you never make it home to me."
He gently kissed her cheek, but suddenly she lurched forward in a state of shock.
"Excuse me! Excuse me - please wait, please!" Kathryn called in the direction of a creature just up ahead of them, as she ran up to him. It spun around to reveal just what she'd been too desperate to hope for. It was a Klingon. A Klingon being, here in San Francisco.
"I'm not here to listen to more of your ridicule, I am here on official business. Starfleet is aware of my presence. I am unarmed", croaked the Klingon.
"No it's not that. I am... I am Klingon, Sir, if I might just ask you a few questions. There is no information of the whole of Earth about your - our - race except a few battle histories and techniques at Starfleet. I just want to know about some cultural rituals if I might experience them - might I join the Klingon?"
She knew she was asking some deep questions that she could be seriously in trouble for but she was so comforted by his face that she could hardly hold back from hugging him - but she knew enough of Klingon personality traits to know that wasn't at all appropriate.
"I'm not sure I should be talking to you, you human."
"My grandmother was a full-blooded Klingon. My name is T'Lorah! I am Klingon, please you simply must believe me!"
The next thing she felt was not an overwhelming sense of relief as he began to explain everything she'd longed to understand for so many years as she had expected. It was a familiar blow to the back of the head and the harsh reality of the ground meeting her nose before and Sam's voice yell out in protest, and then everything faded into darkness.
* * *
"Ms Kathryn Paris."
Kathryn could hear a man's deep voice snarling at her from a long way off. She followed his voice instinctively, pulling herself out of unconsciousness. As if she suddenly emerged from a tunnel, she could focus on bright images around her. She felt she was being held up under both arms - she tried to move, but her legs were paralysed and felt as though every skerrick of energy had been zapped from her.
"Cadet Paris can you hear me?"
Kathryn managed a nod, before the Feds released her. She stumbled forward onto her knees and quickly realised she was positioned in front of the Starfleet Board once again. And just as before, she faced them alone.
"You are hereby resigned from the Starfleet Academy and forbidden from commencing there again until this business with the Klingon race is settled - either by war or an unconditional treaty - and we can trust you in the sky. You will be released into the custody of your father on the justification that you are the only family he has and he is in a frail state of health. You will be granted two weeks holiday from Earth each year on a local space station, where each morning you will required to present yourself to a Starfleet-approved space station official."
"What? No..." was all she could manage through the intense pain in her head. Suddenly it all seemed to melt away when she saw Admiral Janeway looking down on her, urging her to protest.
"Under what charge?"
"Federation security risk. Take her from the courtroom and release her into her father's custody."
The two men came forward and picked her up off the floor and led her towards the door.
"I would have been the best damn Captain you ever had!" Kathryn cried in anguish.
The Admiral signalled for her to be brought back and she was dropped on her knees again in front of the Board.
"I have no doubt you would have been Ms Paris, but one cadet is not worth risking Federation stability. Your brain is too interested in Klingon activities - you are a security risk to Starfleet."
"It is not a crime to want to understand one's body and one's feelings - that is the only reason I approached that, that, being." At this point she'd realised it had all been a plot to trap her. I would never betray my homeworld", she said, bitterly. "I have been emersed in Starfleet operations since I was four years old. I was even born on a Federation Starship."
"We have it on good authority that your brain is very Starfleet, supposed to be graduating top of your class, I hear."
"Yes Sir. I had been working towards this since before the Klingon War. I wanted to achieve top Starfleet honours, nothing less. I am no more Klingon than you, Admiral."
The few spectators and some Board members gasped quietly at her bold remark.
"You certainly have the academic talent and credentials to achieve your dream, Kathryn Paris. Just as your paternal ancestors have done before you. You have inherited their passion. However, it is not your head that will betray you. It is your heart and what it feels towards your maternal ancestors."
"Are you telling me I'm too Klingon to be human? Because I'm also too human to be Klingon. Neither culture allows for a median, and yet here I am. I am the median. You cannot deny it, I'm standing here in front of you!" Then, attempting to cool her temper and sound mature, "I would have served you honourably."
"Honour is a very Klingon word."
"Yes it is. And I learnt it from you and from my father and from the Academy."
"We are doing this to protect you, Kathryn. If they ever capture you they will use your heritage against you and the Federation. Better you no nothing."
Kathryn knew it was no use fighting the Board anymore. Tears began falling silently down her cheeks. It was an unfamiliar sensation that brought to the surface all her years of loneliness and isolation. Except that now she was more bewildered than ever, and her final hope for a normal existence lay in pieces all around her, invisible to those who had destroyed it.
"What will happen to me now, then?" she almost whispered.
"The sentence stands."
Kathryn nodded, the information slowly sinking in and dragging her down with it. "If it pleases the Board, may I solicit two amendments to the sentence?"
He conferred with the members beside him and looked behind for support.
"And they are?"
"That I be allowed to sit my finals and graduate from Starfleet Academy - in my correct finishing position and gain the rank of ensign - with the rest of my class. It is not my fault you did not remove me before now. I would like to complete the course. Of course, I will never fly mission with a Starship crew until your conditions are met."
"That is reasonable - we will consider it, and inform you at a later date."
"The second, is not an amendment, more a request."
"Continue."
"That if I ever marry a full-blooded human and our children have no defining Klingon characteristics, they will never be prosecuted as I have been and may pursue any career in any field with no limitations on rank."
"Also, your children must never have contact with a Klingon or one with a knowledge of Klingon culture, other than yourself, and you must not make them aware of your history, until such time as the current situation can be rectified. Do you concur?"
"That I do and I am grateful."
"Therefore I will uphold your request."
"Thank you."
"Release Kathryn Paris into her father's custody."
She had fought hard, but she had still lost the most important thing. They'd taken away her capacity to dream. She'd only ever had two dreams. To be a Starfleet Captain and to understand herself, both of which were now further away than ever.
* * *
Ensign Kathryn Paris smiled ruefully to herself. It was easy to admit that this was the happiest she'd been since her mother's death. Her fiancee gently pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. "I love you T'Lorah Paris", Sam whispered. And how she loved him to hear him speak her true name!
She glanced at her father who had begun the painful road to recovering from his grief - and was much better for it - but he was not perceptive enough to see through his daughter's false happiness. She, like her father, had only being going through the motions of life these last years - she had thrown herself into her study in an effort to blot out the pain and prevent anyone from getting too close. And after all that work, she was still a nobody.
Sam was flying his first long-range mission soon on a research vessel and as his wife, Kathryn had been permitted to go too, providing she was confined to their quarters and few other areas and forbidden to go near any controls. She could hardly believe they would be allowing her near a ship.
Even here, sitting in Sam's arms with her beloved father next to her and surrounded by their friends, no one understood the turmoil within her heart or the constant inner battle of her emotions. Her mother had struggled to come to terms with the same feelings, but at least she'd known of her heritage. Kathryn knew she'd be lucky to ever fly a mission, let alone make Captain. At least she'd wouldn't until people changed. Then, perhaps she could go by the name her mother gave her. As a human who had tried to forget her heritage and was held back because of it anyway, she couldn't perceive where she fit into the universe. She knew that the people, particularly one person, who could have eased her confusion, had been victims of a violent war that, in the end, had left no one.
No one anyway, except a partially Klingon girl who despite all appearances, was desperately alone.
"This is most strange, that she whom but even now was your best object, the argument of your praise, the balm of your age, the best, the dearest, should in this trice of time commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle so many folds of favour. Surely her offence must be of such unnatural degree that monsters it, or your-vouched affection fall into taint; which to believe of her must be a faith that reason without miracle should never plant in me."
- William Shakespeare, King Lear.
Well, there it is - my very first piece of fan fiction. It ended up being much longer than I thought. I really hope you enjoyed it - please review my story. I guarantee I'll read & review at least one of your pieces in return!
COPYRIGHT 1999 KATE DAVIS