"But you must join us in a meal Counselor, as thanks,"
And this is the third time on their journey that he has suggested it. She can only say no thank you so many times. A tiny hand tugs at her own, and suddenly Ridoll is skipping his joy down the corridor, arms aloft in two hands that hold onto him with reasons of their own.
And how unusual, she thinks, that the two do not steam too quickly ahead for her to catch up - how aware of them.
"Please,"
The boy drags out, his voice a nasal wine. His true desire does not linger in his voice, but rather gleams like the beacon of a lighthouse in his mind.
"We have already eaten together,"
Deanna tells hims gently, and knows immediately that she has already sealed her own fate.
"But you didn't eat,"
Ko'lek looks sidelong at her, just as she gestures them to turn right along a fork in the corridor, and his eyebrows are raised at her, his thoughts stuck at what is in her middle, rather than where he sees into her eyes.
As is her nature, she gives nothing away.
"Well, that's because I was not hungry,"
They come to a halt just a door before her own quarters, and the plate is marked Guest, usually empty but for the occasional visitor, and the section is her's alone to be a safe haven: but not tonight.
Ridoll is pouting at her, and she senses a rising tidal wave of confused and forced emotion within him - he may be a well behaved child, but he is still a child. His father has spotted the signs also.
"But I suppose I am hungry now,"
The emotion diffuses quickly into nothing, and relief washes them both, a grateful smile meeting her from Ko'lek as she swipes the access codes into the door panel. It opens up as a standard double room, devoid of decoration, though the lights spring up to meet them immediately, and there is a larger dining area than she finds in her own.
Just as well.
Ridoll runs immediately from their hands and onto the sofa, his small legs kicking him up onto the cushions so that he is just a ball of youth and wonder in amongst so much grandeur. His father laughs.
"Thank you Miss Troi,"
But at least he does not insist on further grandeur.
"Deanna, please,"
She tells him, letting the doors shut behind her, and she has never before noticed how her name sounds out in Bajoran, how it somehow softer.
Ko'lek bows his head a little in acknowledgement, having already made his own instances to be called simple Kol, then shucks off the overcoat he wears, soot falling in a gentle rain about his feet. He does not notice it happen.
"What did you feed him?"
He asks her, watching as Ridoll buries his face into all the loose pillows, smelling how they are fresh and fragrant; he shakes his head at the antics.
"Kava Juice and uttuberry crepes,"
The man frowns his question.
"They're Betazoid, my mother would make them for me as a child,"
Kol nods, and she is thinking about how this is only a small lie, that maybe her mother didn't make them, but they were delicious nonetheless.
"I shall make sure to try them,"
He tells her sweetly, then turns around to fumble at the replicator control panel, not knowing how to make it work quite right. She can sense a hazy kind of recognition in the man, but there is also a loss, and so she sidles her body up beside him, grace in as much as she can maintain it.
"Here,"
Deanna replaces his fingers at the panel, and opens out the culinary selections for evening meals, then cycles down to Bajoran dishes, knowing he will not be wanting anything overtly Klingon. The selection is somewhat limited, given the strained relationship between the Federation and Bajor, but there are a few in her personal selection that she has programmed in herself from memories of childhood meals at the consulate.
If all else fails, they will turn to that.
Indecision does not find a home in him, however.
"Hasperat!"
He exclaims, and from behind them Ridoll squeals a yes.
"You have had it before, Deanna?"
She nods, but then a rush of shock bubbles in his stomach.
"Spicy food will be okay for you?"
Kol asks, gesturing down at her stomach, and she must be much larger than she thinks.
"It will be fine, I am not due for -"
She stops abruptly, takes a jarring breath.
"Well, a while at least,"
It does not appear that he has noticed her sudden terror, and she feels the need to sit all of a sudden. There is pressure on her hips that is ungainly, and still there is the dizziness of turbulent emotions swamping her.
Kol is chuckling as he selects the meal and portion sizes, more adept at this part, and she takes the moment to fumble behind her for the top of a chair, moving deftly to sit heavily into it.
"My wife often forgets also,"
He tells her fondly as she situates herself, and it takes a few seconds for her mind to catch up.
"She's pregnant?"
Keeping the incredulity from her voice is a task, but it also makes a few things much clearer to her now.
"Yes - very,"
There is a fond memory rising alongside a humour inside him. He turns with a single plate in his hands, large and piled high in Hasperat, all pre-rolled and spilling out the large leaves of moba.
"Doll, dinner!"
Kol calls over to his son, and the nickname is endearing enough to put a warmed smile on Deanna face, as she reaches for one of the empty plates she is now being passed. He clambers onto the chair on the end of the table, to her right, and leaves the space at its head open so that she is sandwiched between the two.
The Klingon man moves to sit heavily also.
"Thank you papa,"
The boys manners are impeccable, and she understands why there are eating food that does not require cutler, when he reaches for one of the rolls with unrefined movements. Kol smiles broadly, then reaches behind him with a long arm to bring over a tray of glasses, more juice, passing them out accordingly.
"I'm sorry if he's been too clingy with you,"
He apologises, eyes softening.
"But you look so much like his mother - and to be carrying a child too - I cannot blame the boy,"
Deanna smiles with him, understanding now the recognition that has been bothering her in him, letting it become something she no longer has to solve. Really, she ought to have been able to guess.
"That's quite alright,"
She turns to Ridoll and runs a hand over his hair as he bites around some Hasperat eagerly, then glances back up at his father, the two of them now a picture of something he misses desperately.
"She's not with you is she?"
She asks suddenly, drawing her hand back, worried.
"No, absolutely not, she's at home with our friends resting, unfortunately it is not an easy task to complete with a four year old around, so I offered to bring him with me to make it easier on her,"
Kol sighs sadly.
"We were only supposed to be away for 2 weeks, just ferrying refugees, but there was a Cardassian prison vessel that had been sabotaged, and we had to do something,"
She nods with him, feeling how the memory pains him, and she reaches out to pat his forearm on the tabletop before placing a single roll on her own plate as he moves to do the same.
"She will understand, I'm sure,"
Deanna offers, and he is somewhat soothed by this, thinking she has the monopoly of truth on motherhood.
"What does your partner do?"
Kol asks her, a brusque change of subject, then he takes a large bite from his Hasperat and listens respectfully for her answer. She still has not begun to eat, and a pit forms of emotion in her stomach to replace what is not there.
There is a split second, and she forced to decide - to tell the truth or to lie.
"I don't have one,"
Her honesty startles him into swallowing harshly.
"An errant lover, perhaps?"
Humour attempts to find a home in him, to lighten the conversation from the depths it attempts to descend into, but it is a terrible effort, and he can see in her face that she is trying to conceal how she feels from him.
And she betrays nothing at all.
"Not exactly,"
She tells him carefully, then her lips pull back at last over the edge of her hasperat, taking a bite that is small and cautious and thoughtful. Kol does the same, taking off half of his own in one fell swoop, hungrier than he will admit.
They both take the time for silence, to regard Ridoll separately but with similar concern, and suddenly, whatever is happening is very domestic.
"I doubt you would believe me anyway,"
Deanna says following a tight swallow, measuring the man in a second that tells her all she really needs to know - and maybe it will be enlightening, maybe it will open her up.
"I find it hard to believe myself,"
Sadness clouds her voice, and he swallows too, watching as his son reaches for another roll with joyful eyes and an appetitive soul, oblivious to the gravity of conversation going on around him.
Kol frowns suspiciously, narrowed eyes in that same good humour as before.
"Correct me if I'm mistaken, Deanna Troi, but there is only one way that I know of to make a child, and it usually involves two,"
Despite herself, she cannot help but smile coyly along with him, for a moment of stretched lips before she takes a sip of her juice, the heat that works its way beneath her tongue just now becoming too much.
Swallowing, she takes a moment to bite back whatever humour of her own she might have responded with once, and instead centres herself around the thought of a ball of light, and the blur her life has become since then.
"It is perhaps not so simple for me,"
A beat.
"You are aware that the universe is made up of uncertainties, yes?"
He nods, tries not to get lost in her eyes.
"So it is feasible to say that anything is possible, even the things we might not believe to be?"
Again, the Klingon man nods, and there is an air to him that tells her she is safe to tell him these things, that he is not like all the other men who might have suggested termination, or experimentation, before him. A glint in him tells her that he knows more of the dominion of a woman than most people ever learn in a lifetime.
"Okay, so imagine that I did not -"
Deanna pauses, eyes the ever-listening Ridoll warily, but the slurping sounds of him echoing in his glass as he drinks are enough to ensure he likely is not following conversation too closely.
" - do any of the necessary bits,"
Ko'lek's eyes draw together again, and one eyebrow breaks free in suggestion of the things she has not said.
"I image this to be possible, yes,"
He parrots, then takes the rest of his hasperat roll in his mouth, chewing pensively as he waits for her next move.
"And so imagine then that one day I was not pregnant, and the next, I was,"
Ko'lek gulps.
"What would that look like?"
Deanna poses at last, and he gulps again, takes a swig of juice, intrigued by where this conversation has gone.
A beat.
"Immaculate conception?"
He asks her seriously, as though she is delving into something of mythology, and he might just not stop at the house of Troi.
A nod is all it takes to set his imagination alight, and his eyes widen beneath his heavy brow, awe inspired in the man to such a degree that he has forgotten all about the food that begins to cool in front of him.
She has no appetite to speak of anyway.
"You're telling me that the child has no father, that it simply came to be?"
"Not exactly,"
Deanna counters, a mirror to how she had begun this story, and maybe the main theme of it all, that really what has happened here is not comparable to anything that can possibly be imagined. Slowly, she reaches for another drink of juice, uses the time to eye up Ko'lek's unwavering concentration on her, thinking it strange that anyone should want to listen with such care to a stranger.
"There was a being of light who did this to me, late at night a few weeks ago,"
Shock registers.
"Weeks!"
Kol bellows, loud enough to startle the table for a second, but he is quick to check himself, and Ridoll has not been distracted enough from chewing on the end of a large salad leaf he has artfully extracted from his wrap.
"No, that is not possible,"
He says now more reserved, incredulous and gripping the edge of the table with a fist that grounds him in his emotion, and does not allow him to fly into anger, or raucous conversation that is not demonstrative of the kind of man he prides himself on being. Deanna notes this, shifting uncomfortably in her seat to face into him more than craning her neck, and her back begins to throb more keenly than before, the child reacting to the spice by digging her repeatedly in the ribs.
She breathes deeply to force away the pain, to try to reclaim some space for her diaphragm to expand and satisfy the way her lungs burn for more air than they are given.
Ko'lek notes this too.
"But if we assume that the universe can cause anything to be possible, then I suppose I can accept the premise, but the practicality -"
He forces a grimace to his face.
"I'm sure my wife would have something to say on that,"
His eyes have landed to scan the swell of her stomach, and she can feel it too, that this is something that would be too difficult to imagine if it were not in front of him, and for her too, perhaps, had it not already happened.
"I know, I have grown very large very quickly,"
Deanna says on his behalf, saving him the embarrassment of having to point it out, and her two hands come down to pat the top of her bump, maybe not lovingly, but certainly with the derision her words had possessed. The hands make a thumping sound against her skin, and it is late into the evening already, her stomach is becoming harder as it does in the nighttime.
"And you were chosen - by this being?"
Kol presses, and she can move from her stomach to grab her glass in both hands now, taking a larger drink than before to satisfy whatever odd need for it's flavour has grown suddenly in her.
A swallow, and she has never had a good enough answer to this question.
"I -"
She stutters.
Pain is evident now in her tone.
"I do not know,"
Bravery all of a sudden becomes her, as though he might know a way to help her.
"I am sure only that I was not given a choice,"
Deanna tells him, and her words are sombre, truthful, a silent wonder behind them that she has come even this far.
The man shuts his eyes for a second, and shakes his head as though the universe has come up with one possibility that he wishes he did not have to accept, and yet the soft brutality of it all is perhaps the one constant he has seen in all his years travelling it.
Somehow, after all this time, it seems even to him that all women will never be given a choice, all of the time.
Kol opens his eyes again, and the world still has not changed.
"This is not a blessed event, Deanna Troi,"
He says, his belly now full and heavy.
"I'm sorry this is not easy for you, and that you believe you're alone, but I wonder if I might ask you something?"
She nods.
"Do you know the meaning of your name?"
Inside her mind, a story begins to tell itself, the story of a woman and a myth all the same, of fact and fanatical fiction.
Her name, as it was intended, means mercy.
Just Mercy.
She was named for a Goddess, maybe similar to the Greek Nemesis, but less obscure, whose mythology makes her a woman who strips away the pain of battle.
Back in the days when unrefined Betazed broiled up in War, hot and internal.
She was supposedly the first telepath, her powers immaculate, a coup de grace, something inherited beyond her line long after the reality of her life had been lost.
She was possessed of Beauty, fathered by an alien, they wrote, her eyes were starkly purple in a world of black. And in her eyes, well there was her namesake, her mercy, the secondary universe caught in a loop in time; one look was powerful enough to fell an entire army, have them begging on their knees.
Begging for her.
Really, she was no mercy at all, but she inspired the desire for it, and she ended so many wars that otherwise would have ended in bloodshed, before disappearing from record.
And so, Deanna had been named for her, named for Mercy - not so that the God's may have it on her halfling soul, but so that others may benefit from her own, so that she may be begged for. She had been named for her line, for the generation, for the parallels in their existence, for whatever else of fire, fury and mercy she may be full of.
She is called Mercy, and she is a woman of black eyes and good breeding, of powers that grow in as much as the powers that remain hidden: the blessings of her namesake.
"Deanna?"
Kol prompts her, and she has been thinking for longer than she knows; Ridoll watches the interaction between the two of them, his eyes now full and drooping the fatigue of being so.
"Mercy, my name means mercy,"
She tells him, a word that in and of itself means more than a name or a place or even an event in history. There is not time enough to speak of it all.
"Yes,"
The man hums, contemplatively, rubs a hand under the plaited beard that hangs from his chin.
"And maybe this is your chance to show it?"
Deanna shakes her head, she does not understand.
"Show mercy to what grows of you - love in spite of origin - this is what I tell my son,"
He reaches a long arm across the table, and Ridoll reaches back instinctively to clasp his fist around two of his father's huge fingers, the two of them charmingly in love.
Deanna is still - as though she cannot help it - shaking her head.
"It is not that simple,"
And she knew she would come back to this, that nothing is ever going to be simple.
