A/N: In which Winona plans, Nero vacillates between woobie and really, really creepy, and the Romulans begin to be cautiously optimistic.

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You don't say, you will

But inside I know

You don't say that it hurts

And tonight killed slow

All the love, in the world

Won't let you let go - let you, let go

--Beth Hart

---

A month passed, then two, then three. Winona had no idea where they were going or what they were doing, and she didn't ask. She was careful each morning when she washed her face--careful not to scrub, that the tattoos might last as long as possible.

The worst fierce flame of her grief burnt down to embers, helped largely by the Romulan women. And when it had--when she could think again, and move without pain--she considered the next part of her plan.

As she'd suspected, the markings on her face prompted the Romulan to mostly leave her alone. Onen or one of the other women had probably spoken to him, too, advising him to back off while she was still such a mess. She was glad he had, too, because it gave her time to think and work on phase one of her plan--learning Romulan. The women were more helpful than the holovid, for they were more than happy to teach her--and in return she taught them the details of Terran standard they would never learn from formal lessons. Fortunately for her she had a decent gift with languages, and though Romulan was unlike any she'd ever studied she picked it up fairly quickly. The writing was much more difficult, but she figured she could leave that until she was reasonably fluent in the spoken language. She wasn't in any hurry--she couldn't afford to be.

Meanwhile, her son grew--grew so rapidly it wasn't long before she had to cobble together new baby clothes, and though he wasn't yet sleeping through the night he at least woke her up less. The women continued to fuss over him, and she was content enough to let them, they had so little joy in life.

Halfway through the third month, when her markings were noticeably faded, the Romulan finally paid her another visit, and when he asked her to go walking she didn't protest. This would be a trial run, she thought--a chance to see if she was ready to start sowing the seeds of the third part of her plan.

"I thought I might show you things at a lower altitude," he said, and she would swear there was something like amusement in his voice. It was a strange thing to hear, since it was still side-by-side with grief--a combination that shouldn't have been possible, but somehow he managed it. That disturbing intensity in his eyes had not diminished, but she'd steeled herself for it and it was not so unsettling now.

And, she could tell, he was making an effort to subdue it. He seemed to have consciously reduced his stride as he led her through the lower levels, filled with machinery far too complex for her to comprehend, all naked black wires and twisted piping, those greenish lights glowing at every work station. It was weirdly humid down here, in the very bowels of the ship, and eventually she figured out why--here and there were pockets of dark water, which steamed faintly.

"We used to filter ore, in our Before," the Romulan explained, when he caught on to her curiosity. "It has no purpose now, but many of the crew come from more humid areas, and it keeps the air from growing too dry."

It surprised her he would be so considerate of his crew--that didn't seem in keeping with what she'd seen (and heard) of him.

"Don't you worry about it shorting anything out?" Winona asked, actually looking up at him. He seemed…different right now, as though moving through his ship somehow calmed him. His expression was less fierce, his exhausting intensity a little subdued. He was inspecting his domain; he was thinking of something besides her. It was much easier to be around him when he was in such a state.

"All the electronics on this level are sealed and grounded--and most of them are wired further above. The water ran through here much faster, once." Even his voice was calmer down here, almost--almost a little wistful, and she wondered what he was thinking. She still didn't really know her enemy.

They passed a few personnel as they walked, all busy at their stations, and she wondered what they did down here. They gave their captain a nod--apparently Romulan civilians didn't bother with salutes--and if they were at all curious about her presence, they didn't show it. And while they seemed a little wary of their captain, they weren't afraid of him. Interesting.

They paused at an elevator, and the Romulan said, "There is a proper deck up there--no drops. I'd like to show you the bridge."

She was more than happy to see that, even though she'd never be able to escape from there--she might at least get some inkling of how the ship worked. The elevator put her in a little closer proximity with him than she precisely liked, but she'd steeled herself against that as well. It was a thing she could mostly ignore if she tried hard enough--she could stave off her discomfort if she thought of something else. In this case it was Jim, little Jim with his amazingly blue eyes. Let the Romulan think she'd simply grown more accustomed to him.

The ship's bridge was…impressive, almost hellishly so. Like the rest of the ship, it was largely black and utilitarian, the helm and comm station lit with green. It was so huge Winona had a feeling it had only recently been walled off from the rest of the ship--that once it had been just another bit of the interior vastness.

It was also only sparsely populated--Onen sat at the help, while the Romulan's second-in-command, Ayel, seemed to be in charge of things even though he was pacing rather than sitting. Anir, one of the other women Winona had come to know, was manning communications, and that seemed to be it. She wondered what the hell everyone else was doing.

Onen didn't actually smile when she saw her, but some of the tension in her face eased. "I was not sure when I would see you here," she said, in Romulan, and Winona had to think a moment before she could line up a response.

"It is not too high for me," she managed, with a half-smile--her pronunciation was still atrocious, though not so bad as it had once been.

She could sense the Romulan's surprise, even without looking at him. "I don't know you spoke our language," he said--in Standard, fortunately, and Winona managed a wry laugh.

"I don't," she said. "Not really. They've been trying to teach me, but it's a complicated language. I still don't understand past tense at all." This charade was so much easier with Onen around--Onen, with whom she was genuinely comfortable. "And I don't know if I'll ever manage to read it, the alphabet is so different."

"Doesn't help that none of us can read Standard," Onen added. "What did you call it--the blind leading the blind?"

Winona nodded, peering at the glowing green patterns on the helm console. "I'm figuring out how to render Romulan phonetically in the Standard alphabet--and probably misspelling most of it--but the writing…Terran Standard only has twenty-six letters. Even now some people on Earth have difficulty learning some of the Asian dialects, because the writing is so different."

The Romulan had moved closer while she spoke--though not, she noticed, so close as to violate the unspoken barrier she'd surrounded herself with. "I read Standard," he said. "I could give you lessons."

She looked at him, surprised. Not only that he could read Standard--for she wouldn't have thought it something a miner would think worthwhile to learn--but that he would think to teach it to her. And yet it was almost perfect; it killed two birds with one stone. She would learn to read Romulan while giving him some of the companionship he craved in an environment that wouldn't make her horribly uncomfortable.

"I--think I'd like that," she said, and it was amazing how much his countenance could lift without that fierce tattooed face changing expression in the slightest. It was a little startling, how pleased that seemed to make him. Maybe she was right--maybe he'd take whatever he could get, for now, especially if she let him believe it might go somewhere. And she'd get exactly what she needed.

Onen looked from one to the other, and Winona thought she saw something like relief in the navigator's face. Maybe she was glad of this, too, for whatever reasons of her own.

"In the morning," he said, half a question. "Maybe after you've eaten?"

She thought a moment. "That would work," she said. "It's said the Terran mind is freshest in the morning, anyway, and I'm sure Doctor Sy could look after Jim. And," she added, glancing at Onen, "maybe once I've got some idea what I'm doing, I could turn it around and teach you all to read Standard."

The navigator actually did give her a smile this time, and that smile eased some of Winona's own tension. She'd put up with all sorts of unpleasant things at the Academy; this would simply be one more, and at least her time with all the women would grant her a bit of a reprieve. She could tolerate Nero if she knew there was something less awful awaiting her.

You thought his name. That startled her; it was the first time she'd done so since she arrived. She didn't know if it was a good sign or a bad one, so she decided not to think about it right now--she could put the thought away and examine it later, when she was away from him, from all of them. The Romulan--Nero--whatever she wanted to call him, was watching her again, his expression a most peculiar and theoretically impossible mixture of reserve, grief, possession, and something very like hope, which only reminded her how crazy he really was. He might be a functional captain, but that didn't mean he was sane, and no matter what came later, she had to keep that in mind.

He quirked an eyebrow, silently inviting her to explore the rest of the bridge, and she did, albeit carefully. All the instrument panels were much rougher than anything in Starfleet, still carrying the black-and-green motif, but the technology continued to be far removed from anything she was used to. Even if she had a decade, there was likely no way in hell she would ever be able to get any use out of anything in here; she'd have to find some other means of aiding her escape.

She lingered a while, but eventually she had no choice but to return to the Romulan's side. There was something almost…comforting…in the furnace of his proximity, despite the fact that the ship itself was rather warmer than the Kelvin had ever been, and the fact that she thought so sent off all kinds of alarms in her head. She couldn't start thinking that--she couldn't let herself identify with him at all, or she risked…too much. Far too much. She had to keep her head clear.

He must have seen something--who knew what--in her face, for he looked at her gravely. "I think, maybe, you should eat now," he said. "I will take you back to your doctor."

Winona, bewildered by his sudden shift of mood, bade Onen farewell and followed him back through the labyrinth of the ship's corridors and platforms, trying vainly to memorize them. When he delivered her to the door of her quarters, he turned to her and said, half short and half hesitant, "You know that if you need anything, you only have to ask me." Those black-black eyes seemed to hold hers a moment, paralyzing her where she stood, and after a moment she managed to nod.

"I know," she said quietly, forcing herself to speak. The only thing she needed was her freedom, which she was not about to ask him for, but she had to acknowledge his meaning, his intent.

He reached up as if to touch her hair, but his hand stilled about an inch away. She hadn't flinched that time, not even slightly, but he still hesitated, and turned away without actually touching her. Not until he was out of sight around a corner did Winona realize she'd been holding her breath.

----

The next morning, insofar as there was 'morning' on a starship, found her in what passed for the Romulan's office, that hastily-cobbled-together space crammed with equipment. He'd made room for her at the massive, impromptu desk, carefully placing her chair a certain distance from him--she wondered why he was being so respectful of her unspoken boundaries, and how he even knew about them. Crazy or not, he was damned perceptive in some ways.

He gave her a nod and something that was not quite a smile, and gestured her to sit. She did, only a little awkwardly; once again she'd steeled herself against his proximity, and a little awkwardness on her part was still very understandable. After all, even though she'd been here several months, she hadn't actually seen him very much, and he had to know how intimidating he was.

There were several data pads on the desk, neatly lined up--unsurprisingly they were black, though the screens themselves were the white she was used to. She tried not to bite her lip when the Romulan took the seat beside her--she might have tried to prepare herself for such proximity, but she could only do so much. That oil-ale-soap smell seemed to surround her, almost infused with that inferno of his body temperature, but somehow she managed not to twitch.

"This one I programmed with both alphabets," he said, touching the pad nearest her. "The Romulan equivalents of your twenty-six, and others related to them with similar meanings."

She took the pad and perused it, somewhat surprised at how well-organized it was. "Were you ever a teacher?" she asked, scanning all the compartmentalized contents.

He looked at her, for the first time she had met him genuinely startled. "No," he said, "but my wife was, before we married."

Ah. His wife. The proverbial elephant in the room. Mandana--a pretty name, if very strange to Winona, a woman who had apparently looked rather unfortunately like her. "It seems to have rubbed off on you," she said, after a very uncomfortable silence. "One of my Starfleet instructors might have put this together like you have."

It was an odd sort of quasi-compliment, and he took it as such. "She used to quiz me," he said. "I didn't receive much higher education--it's somewhat wasted on a miner--but she would force little tests on me. She said just because I was a miner it was no excuse for ignorance."

That actually made her smile, just a little. Crazy the Romulan might be, but his wife sounded almost like someone Winona would have liked. Nero couldn't have been so mad when he was married to her, either; if the woman was anything like the shape she was slowly taking in Winona's mind, she wouldn't have put up with it.

You thought his name again. It didn't seem so peculiar this time, though, and in any case it might well be a good thing. Her plan would be easier to implement if she could bring herself to acknowledge that he had a name, especially a name so fitting to his madness.

She wasn't looking at him, but she could feel him studying her closely, with a mixture of curiosity and something else she had no name for, nor did she want to look for one. It made her deeply uncomfortable, more aware than ever of the peculiarly forceful elements of his presence, and to break the tension she found herself asking almost hesitantly, "Do you…have any pictures of her?"

He looked away from her, and was silent so long she wondered if she'd pissed him off. Finally, though, he stood, and brought a little holo cube from a makeshift shelf. He set it on the desk and touched a small button on its side, and a greenish hologram sprang from it. It must have been taken not long before he'd left Romulus, for she was obviously pregnant--a beautiful woman who did indeed bear an unsettling resemblance to Winona herself. She was laughing, her fair hair caught in the wind, and looked completely happy--it was an expression she simply could not reconcile with the unsettling grief-pain-fury-obsession with the Romulan beside her. It was difficult to believe he could have been married to a woman like that--as she'd suspected, he must once have been a very, very different person.

Her eyes flicked from the hologram to his profile, and the expression on his face startled the hell out of her. She had no idea what he'd been, before, but there seemed to be a distinct echo of that dead man in his face now. The pain and grief were tempered by what she couldn't help but recognize as love--slightly obsessive love, but love nonetheless. It was made even more disturbing when juxtaposed with the black tattoos, the almost demonic cant of his eyebrows, but she could almost…pity him, in that moment, watching the last image he'd taken of his dead wife.

This man killed your husband, she reminded herself. He destroyed your ship, and the only reason he let you live was because you remind him of that woman. Don't forget that.

She wouldn't--she couldn't--but that didn't stop her feeling half-sorry for him. It was easier to see now that he hadn't always been a monster--that, in what he called his Before, he might even have been a person she could have got along with. The contrast of that thought with what she'd seen of him now triggered an almost dizzying sense of dissonance.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, the words escaping her mouth without consulting her brain. He'd killed her husband and all her friends aboard the Kelvin for absolutely no reason at all, but for that fleeting moment she could pity him and mean it.

He looked at her, those black eyes obviously startled. "Don't be," he said, echoing Onen's words. "It was none of your doing, or your fault." Now it was he who seemed something like uncomfortable, and she wondered if it was because her loss was very much his fault--her grief, and the markings on her face that displayed that grief, were entirely his doing. He might never say so aloud, but he knew it, and she knew he knew it, and what an odd dynamic that created; she wondered if there wasn't some way she could use it. He obviously didn't like to see her in pain, yet he was the root cause of all of it. Hmm.

Now it was she who looked away, unable to bear that scrutiny any longer. The sheer depth of his intensity was as bad as ever it had been today; he must have forgotten to consciously tamp it down. It made her skin crawl, though not entirely unpleasantly, for it was more like a low-grade electrical current than anything overtly menacing. He simply radiated tension and heat like some kind of humanoid sun.

"Winona…" But he trailed off, for there was nothing he could say, no apology he could make that wouldn't be completely hypocritical. In that at least she held the upper hand, because no matter what happened in the future, the fact that he'd murdered her husband would always hang in the background, unspoken.

"I know," she said, because she knew he wouldn't say anything else, nor did she want him to. She didn't think she could handle it if he did, and she flat-out refused to cry in front of him, ever, especially not when she knew what Romulans thought of tears. The women had been far more understanding than she would have expected, but she was under no illusions as to what this one might think of it. She'd betray no weakness to him, not if she could help it. Nevertheless, it took great effort to blink back her tears, the sharp burning in her eyes, and she didn't turn back to him until any suspicious moisture was gone and her expression a complete mask. The mask itself was something of a giveaway, but it was a rather more Romulan reaction. If she was going to fight her enemy, she had to become like it, to a certain degree, and if she had to cry she was going to make damn sure nobody else saw it.

If only he'd stop looking at her. Distraction was necessary, so she touched the pad again, the screen shifting through the complexities of the Romulan alphabet as she tried valiantly to rally a more businesslike demeanor--and if she looked down, her hair hid anything her expression might have betrayed. It would give her a few more moments to collect herself into something more stony and less human.

The bastard didn't take the hint, though; she could still feel his eyes on her, as though his gaze was a palpable, physical thing. Damn his perception--she knew he was reading the lines of tension in her shoulders, even if he couldn't see her face, and it made her want to scream, to throw something, anything at him, and she held onto that rage like a lifeline, because if she was angry she wasn't grieving, and if she wasn't grieving she wasn't in any danger of crying. If he was so foolish as to say anything she really would throw something at him, consequences be damned, but he remained silent, and whatever might be going on in his head was something she couldn't even begin to fathom.

"Winona, what?" she said at last, unable to help herself. "Winona what?" Now she did bite her lip, trying with almost Herculean effort to hold back any further words, for they could not end well at all. "I don't understand your world or your people, I don't understand your technology or anything about you, you want me to be your wife even though you know I'm not and you miss her as much as I miss George--"

She finally broke off, only because the tears she'd tried so valiantly to hold back took over. There was no knowing how he'd react to that, but right now she was too worked up to even care. Escape seemed so impossible just now, even more so than trying to go on like this, so far from home culturally as well as physically.

She wouldn't have dared look at him even if she'd cared what he might do, but even through her unendurable grief she managed to be surprised at what he did do. He laid a very light hand on her shoulder, a hand so hot she could feel it through her shirt, and for some reason even Winona couldn't fathom she let him pull her into a very loose, very light hug. Her rational mind wanted to kill him for it, but rationality was currently extremely far away, and the primitive, almost insanely grieving part of her craved any kind of comfort, even if it was coming from her worst enemy. She'd hate herself for it later, but right now her strength had completely deserted her and left her as lost and alone as a child. Monster or not, he was so damned warm, and whatever he thought of this sudden breakdown he kept to himself. He might not realize how badly her mind was slipping, or if he did he might think it a good thing--she couldn't know, and right now she didn't care. All she could do was sink down into the darkness in her mind once more, while her husband's murderer tried to comfort her for his own crime.

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A/N: Poor Winona, I didn't mean for her to start losing her marbles like this, but apparently she's determined to. Even an officer can only handle so much PTSD, and now she has to deal with creepy obsessive Nero and his bizarre little kindnesses. I don't know if she's precisely heading into Stockholm Syndrome territory, because she's a little too aware of exactly what's going on, but she's heading into something.

Anyways, as always, thank you to all you lovely reviewers out there. :)