Chapter 3. Month Three
Things are a little easier between me and Gres. But things are harder for Naomi. On this space station with tens of thousands of people on any given day, she is like a village child come to the big city. It is often overwhelming and sometimes terrifying, and it seems to be getting harder instead of easier.
School is a challenge for her - not academically, but socially. She's never spent so much time with other children her age. She doesn't understand children's culture here, and she doesn't seem to be making friends, which worries me.
She tells me a classmate teased her about her horns. I tell her that children will tease about anything. It's so minor, compared to - I break off thoughts of the past, ruthlessly. She asks me how long we will have to stay here. "Here in the Alpha Quadrant?" I am being absurd, trying to draw a smile.
She gives me a sullen look. "Here on Deep Space Nine. You know what I meant."
I remind her that her father's job is on this space station. Her expression doesn't change; she didn't consider that an answer. As she turns away at last, though, I see her face crumple.
That night, after Naomi is in bed, I bring a mug of tea to Gres and tell him about the conversation, the teasing, my worries about Naomi. We sit together, mostly in silence, drinking tea. He finally says, "We don't have to stay here."
"Your work, though?" I countered.
"I can seek a new posting. We can look for postings together. We could leave Starfleet, even move to Ktaris."
"You would leave your work for Naomi? Leave Starfleet?"
"I would do anything for Naomi. You must know that, Sam."
I cover his hand with my own. "I do."
Then I say, "We shouldn't make a hasty decision, or leave what we have here just in hopes of landing somewhere better. She will have to make an adjustment no matter where we are. She will have to learn to get along with children her age and to function in high-population areas no matter where we live."
"That's true," he acknowledges. "It's just hard to know she's unhappy." Then he asks the question he's been afraid to ask all along. "Would she be happier without me around?"
I squeeze his hand. "No, Gres. I really don't believe so."
"She still keeps her distance from me." I have noticed this too but had foolishly hoped that perhaps he had not.
"It's early days yet. She's only ever known one parent." I am trying to reassure him. He isn't buying it.
"She may be waiting to see if we're really going to stay together before she lets herself get attached to me." He isn't angry, isn't accusing either of us of anything. He's naming what he thinks he sees, testing the truth of it.
I don't deny it. Can't. "Naomi is perceptive. There is no point in trying to hide things like this from her. But I don't … overshare. I don't talk to her about our marriage. I'm not planting those seeds in her mind." Now I'm the one who needs reassurance.
"I know. I didn't think you were." He squeezes my hand back. Then he says, "I want to take you and Naomi to visit Ktaris. To see my parents and be among Ktarians for a time."
I look at him thoughtfully. "Do you think this would help Naomi?"
"I do. I also think it would help us, as a family, to get away from here for a while. A vacation."
"When?"
"When her school term is over. Next month."
I'm relieved. That gives me time to consider this, and to prepare. I haven't seen his parents since our honeymoon, which we spent on Ktaris. We were on good terms, and I want them to meet their granddaughter. But I have misgivings about how they will react to the changes in me, to our marital strain.
"Can we discuss this with the counselor?" I ask.
"Of course," he says. "I want to." And I go to bed that night thinking he has the same misgivings. But, as it turns out, his are different.
Gres and I are in a joint counseling session, and he is telling me something that our counselor has obviously heard before, but which is news to me.
I hold up my hand, confused, needing to stem the flow of information. "Wait, please, Gres. Back up."
He stops talking and looks at me, an expression of dread on his face.
"During the war, you served on a ship that came under attack. You lost friends. You narrowly escaped injury yourself."
"That's right."
"And you were evacuated from the station and unable to return for months. Then came back to find devastation, atrocity. It was dreadful."
"It was."
"You told me all of that long ago, in letters while we were on Voyager."
"I did."
"And now you're telling me that after the war … you got engaged?"
"I thought you were dead. Starfleet had pronounced you all missing, presumed dead. More than a year before the war."
"Yes, I know. I understand. Lots of Voyager crew partners did likewise - mourned and moved on. So you got engaged, but not married? And you're only telling me about it now? I don't understand. What happened?"
"I didn't move on! " His vehemence startles me. I think it startled him, or worse. I look to our counselor for guidance, a reality check. I am deeply confused.
She offers Gres a lifeline. "Gres, can you tell Samantha how the engagement came about?"
He looks helplessly at me. "My parents," he whispers. And then he starts to sob.
The story comes out haltingly, in shreds, and seems to shred his dignity as he tells it.
He had been, as far as anyone knew, widowed for years, and then suffered dislocation, loss, and mortal fear during the war. But he had survived.
His parents came. They brought him back to Ktaris for a month, to recover. But also, as they saw it, to begin a new life; it was time. They introduced him to a Ktarian woman whose fiance had joined the Maquis and been killed by Cardassians in the long lead-up to the Dominion War.
They were both numb with grief and post-traumatic stress. They had similar backgrounds; their families knew each other. She would be willing to follow him back to Deep Space Nine, to support his Starfleet career. It was enough. They went through the engagement ceremony and planned the wedding for their continent's next harvest season, the traditional wedding month.
Gres returned to spend their engagement on Deep Space Nine, while she stayed on Ktaris.
Then word came that Voyager was found, that I was alive, that Naomi existed. He hastily wrote me, our first contact in over three years. His letter said nothing of any of this.
We were tens of thousands of light years away. We had no reasonable hope of getting home for decades yet. His parents pressured him to divorce me, to keep his Ktarian engagement. They wanted him to have a normal life, after so much loss.
He refused. He broke the engagement. It was a costly decision. Two failed engagements for a Ktarian woman left her with dim prospects for a good marriage. His parents lost status, lost connections, along with the engagement gifts that were part of the bride price - years' worth of savings. Worst, they lost their hope of grandchildren, at least any they might see in their lifetime. They were angry with him. He hadn't returned to Ktaris since.
He kept faith with me.
"You kept faith with me," I echo, after a time.
"Yes," he answers.
"... Why?" I ask, in blind bewilderment.
He stares at me in disbelief. "Samantha ..." and his hands go to his temples, as if he would tear out his hair, claw at his horns. "How the fuck can you sit there and ask me that?"
"But … I had an affair. I loved Joe Carey. And it didn't upset you."
"Shit!" he cries. "You still don't get it, do you?"
I'm too stunned to say more than, "Get … what?"
"What I've given up for you! For … our careers, our life together! To live the life you planned. I couldn't turn my back on that. On you. Couldn't go back to where I started." He is struggling to form these sentences, and I am struggling to understand what they mean.
"When did I ask you to give up anything? Least of all for me ?"
"When we fell in love and you were human!"
I'm shocked to hear him speak this way. At the Academy, when we were dating, when we were planning to marry, our being of two different species had never been an issue, beyond verifying that we could have children together with fertility assistance. We were Federation citizens training for careers in Starfleet. Beyond that, I'd never thought about it.
"Gres? I've never cared that you aren't human. When did you start caring that I'm not Ktarian?"
"Samantha, you never had to care. I never had that privilege."
"I don't understand what you're talking about. Haven't we always been equals, under the Federation, in our marriage? Have I been ... insensitive about your background? About your culture?"
"When Naomi told you she's getting teased about her horns, how did you react?"
"I - Come on, Gres, that's just kids being stupid. Nobody's been hurting her."
"And that's your bar for our daughter's well-being? If she's not being physically abused, she's fine? Or is it just if she's not being bullied over something that makes her look like you?"
"How dare you talk like I'm not protecting my own daughter?!" I was suddenly outraged. "Do you have any idea how many times I almost lost her in the Delta Quadrant? How hard that was to go through alone?"
"No, Sam - I don't! I never will! This is one more way you get to be superior to me! And as soon as I have a concern about her, she's your daughter, not ours? God, do you even hear what you're really saying to me?!"
And with that, he storms out of the room, leaving me alone with the counselor. Hurt. Blindsided. And utterly confused.
After a minute, I look up at our counselor and say, "What just happened?"
She looks at me steadily and replies, simply, "Your husband finally tried to tell you what being a Ktarian in Starfleet means to him."
When that sinks in, my shoulders slump. "I didn't take it very well, did I?"
She shakes her head no.
"Fuck."
That night, Gres doesn't come home after work. I can't go to bed without seeing him. After a long time thinking, I finally fall asleep on the couch in the main room, the lights still on, and am awakened very late by a stumbling noise, a muffled curse. I sit up, rub my eyes, and find him standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, head lowered.
I go to him. He sways and adjusts his grip on the frame. I realize he's been drinking. Then I recognize the smell of Ktarian brandy from our honeymoon. I know it isn't served anywhere on DS9; once in a great while he and the other Ktarian on this station, a shopkeeper, will meet up. That's where he sought refuge tonight.
"Gres. Gres. I'm sorry. Please, look at me. I'm sorry."
He looks at me. The grief on his face, the need … I am cut to the quick with empathy, with guilt.
"I'm sorry," I choke out.
"For?" he asks, in a rough, despairing voice.
"For not … seeing you. Not seeing what it's been like for you. What it's always been like for you, leaving Ktaris, coming here, being with me. I'm sorry. I took it for granted, took you for granted. I'm sorry."
He groans, releases the wall, clutches my shoulders, falls to his knees. With his face pressed to my belly, horns curved against my solar plexus, he mutters, "I never wanted it to be your problem. I'm sorry, too."
After months of talking, and sleeping in separate beds, we go silently to his room. We spend the rest of the night wordlessly forgiving one another.