Chapter 2: Trapped
A/N: Thank you very much for your encouraging reviews, Manufactured-triumph, Potterhead1 and Guest reviewer!
Asha was panicking inside. She wanted to punch the living daylights out of General Parem. All she had done was travel to the space station where Romulan vessels often docked, transporting cargo from Romulan ale to confections. Smaller vessels with senators, ambassadors and other important individuals also used the station as a brief stopover on their journey to earth. And all she herself had done was write a holonovel thriller together with her friend André. Part of it took place on a Romulan warbird, and as both of them were completely unfamiliar with Romulus and its starships, they had had to conduct research. With great enthusiasm, she had travelled to a federation outpost near the frontier to watch the Romulan vessels uncloak and dock, and to use the holodeck to integrate her observations. In the meantime, André had stayed back on Earth to wrestle with the little he could find about the Romulan language and culture. She remembered saying Bye to him. She remembered his old turquoise bicycle leaning against a bench outside the library. She remembered setting off for the spaceport to catch a transport to the outpost, excited and encouraged about the answer from the Romulan embassy. She had departed with two suitcases, as she had planned to fly directly to a cousin's wedding after her three-day-stay at the outpost.
Two Romulans had surprised her outside the holodeck and beamed her onto their ship. They had rummaged through her quarters and confiscated her belongings and suitcases. What could be remotely threatening about two henna cones, Indian jewellery and clothes for the wedding, jeans, t-shirts, jumpers, cosmetics, books and other necessities forming the basics of a modern woman's journey equipment was beyond her. They had even scanned her bangles for hidden recording devices and made a huge fuss about her odd-coloured eyes, insisting that she might be carrying a sensor implanted in her optic nerve. It was the most absurd thing she had ever experienced. Obviously, they had never heard of heterochromia, a rare condition where people had different-coloured eyes. Her type was genetic, harmless and usually one of the first things about her people noticed.
As she sat on the ground and picked at the food, which tasted of cardboard, she ruminated about her situation. Her eyes stung with tears as she thought of her friends and family back on Earth. They were probably worried sick about her. And the gifts she had bought for her cousin's wedding… She broke out into a sweat when she thought of her own impending marriage the next day.
Marriage, children and all the trimmings had never been part of the vision she had mapped out for her life, and she had in fact taken deliberate steps to avoid such distractions. André had once claimed that she possessed the discipline and single-mindedness of a Vulcan. Now that her life plan had been upset, she tried to establish a rough picture of her future husband. His face had been thoroughly expressionless throughout the fiasco, but she also recalled how he had tried to help her by calling off the guards and telling her to stop struggling against them. It didn't have to mean anything, of course. For all she knew, he could turn out to be a despicable tyrant. She began to feel dizzy as more adrenaline pumped into her blood. Whether Human or Romulan, conquerors had always derived sickening pleasure from inflicting sexual violence to control and shame their prisoners. She stood up and leant against the wall. The forced marriage was supposed to punish Thorek as well; but the bottom line was that he was a Romulan citizen on his home planet and familiar with the ways of Romulan life. And she…wasn't, to state the painfully obvious. She slowly went through the items in her suitcases to distract herself.
As the evening wore on, supper consisting of some kind of unpalatable broth was delivered together with a PADD. This item contained information on her future husband. She surmised he would be receiving her profile as well.
He was fifty-three years old – very youthful for a Romulan, and this fact added a woefully adolescent touch to her own thirty-three years when she took the diverging lifespans for Humans and Romulans into account. She was a babe in the woods, indeed; perfect as a victim for copious amounts of marital abuse. She wrinkled her nose. If there was one thing she would do, she would rather fight and be shot down with a disruptor than forced into the conjugal bed. She would not be a victim, and she lashed out at the force field with her foot to cement her thought. Her toes protested, but she didn't care. She continued to peruse the PADD after hopping on one foot. A stellar education and career, several awards and publications to his name, unbonded and no children. He knew three languages: Romulan, English and Vulcan. Interesting. She would have thought that Vulcan would be highly unpopular, given the Romulans' brutal history with their biological cousins.
The next morning, she ate a bowl of tasteless porridge, brushed her teeth and showered in the tiny bathroom. She asked the sullen guard who carried away her breakfast tray if she could at least change into fresh clothes. He muttered something in Romulan and left. To her surprise, he returned with one of her suitcases, deactivated the force field, shoved the suitcase at her and left, glaring at her suspiciously as he reactivated the invisible barrier. She changed her clothes, brushed and braided her hair and waited nervously.
After an hour, she was escorted by the sullen guard to the same room where she had met General Parem and Thorek.
Both were already there, the former pacing the ground with his arms crossed pompously across his chest and the latter sitting at the table and focusing on his feet. The guards stood around the table, staring into space. Thorek looked up when she was pushed inside.
His face was expressionless. We're in the same boat, actually. He is being forced into this charade, too, she told herself. So far, the Romulans were living up to the bad reputation they had created for themselves among human beings, and she had already half made up her mind that he would be abusive and force her into consummating their wedding. Her palms grew sweaty, and she clenched them.
The wedding took exactly three minutes. There was no ceremony, only a PADD to sign in the presence of the guards and General Parem. They had been kind enough to add an English translation along the mysterious-looking Romulan script. Obviously, bilingualism was a given among the Tal Shiar – not so much to promote cultural exchange or enhanced cognitive abilities than to spy and eavesdrop on anything which could remotely pose a threat to the Romulan government.
Thorek signed first. He did so like an automaton. General Parem took the stylus from him and practically forced it into her hand. All the English translation said was that a wedding bond was being established between Thorek tr'Darak and Asha Sen, making her bear his name as Asha Sen t'Darak. She wondered if a Romulan woman could keep her own last name or was forced to take her husband's last name – in which case she was going to have a very poor opinion of their stance on gender equality.
She took a deep breath and reluctantly dragged the stylus across the screen, feeling like she was signing her life away. She put the stylus down, stepped back and looked at Thorek. He returned her gaze and she could have sworn she saw a flicker of compassion in his dark eyes.
