Mnhei'sahe and Heis'he
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Mandana/Nero
Series: Belief in Angels
Summary: Translation: Honor and Love. They are eh't, a pair, connected. They are Romulus, and they will do what they must to save it. Her name is Mandana, wife of Nero. This is her story.
1
She grows up with the Tal Shiar, the secret police. She knows paranoia before she learns to feel anything else. She is high-caste. She is lucky. She is not ungrateful.
She is Romulus. Not in the way the Empress was, once, before the Senate, when they were merely pitiably, ruthlessly cruel. No, Mandana is Romulus because she understands it. She is a historian, a diplomat. She is all those things which her people have forgotten how to be. She has constructed herself, carefully, to embody all that is Romulus, to hold it inside her, careful, controlled.
She will not be her father. Her father, the warrior, whose skin Mandana remembers rough with scars, whose pain he carried with him all his life. She never pitied him, never sympathized. Perhaps this was heartless of her, far too Vulcan. But she saw the way his eyes went dark when he was angry. Dangerous. Her brother, three years older and stronger, warned her when to stay away. Told her that their father was a good man, a patriot. Told her to avoid him whenever she could.
He tries to protect her from their father, but he is simply a miniature manifestation of their culture. They are warriors. Mandana knows this is not all they are, that there is more, but at heart, in the purest, deepest part of themselves, they are all of them warriors. It colors everything else that is a part of them.
And so, when the other children hit her, Mandana hits back. It is protection; she never strikes first. But it is also part of her, and Mandana has never been one to shrink away from that. When she does fight, she does it well.
2
Mandana sees, as she grows older, the way outworlders look at them. She knows what they think of her people. She understands that her father is the embodiment of that hate, and when she is old enough she walks to the Senate building. She rests her head against the coolness of its walls and swears that she will show them the beauty of her world.
Mandana is not beautiful. She becomes beauty. She opens her mind, stretches it, coaxes it into the mold of who she wishes to be. She reads, voraciously, learning all she can. She speaks to anyone who will listen, as if she can carry the voices of every Romulan within her.
3
Nero is a miner, like his father before him and his father before him. He is tall and strong and his eyes are deep as the lake near her home. He is gentle, and he speaks easily, without the excessively formal tones of the high castes.
They meet at a dinner, where Nero is to receive commission and a ship. The Narada. She remembers her father speaking about it with one of his business partners. It is their largest mining vessel, and that it be given to one so young as Nero is strange. Mandana respects him. He is calm, quiet, and thoughtful. He is like her, she thinks, though perhaps better. It all seems natural to him. He holds Romulus within him as if it weighs nothing.
Passion is an important thing to her people. Having left Vulcan and all of her madness behind, the once-Vulcans, now-Romulans embrace emotion with all that they are. Mandana had been told, before, when her brother was still alive and not so much like her father, that she reached back to the beginnings, but she had always forgotten passion. Mnhei'sahe, her brother used to tell her, and heis'he. Honor and love. This is too important a thing to our people. Do not forget.
She has never forgotten, but it is only after she meets Nero that she understands it, can feel it in her very core. Something clicks then. There is a shifting within her, and everything slips easily into place. Romulus is not such a heavy burden to carry, now.
She is perhaps imagining that Nero can see this, but she hopes he does.
4
They do not think of propriety, in the beginning. They are young, and their culture has never much cared for such rules anyway.
He speaks with the accent of those from Rateg, and he whispers into her ear lines of ancient poetry when they have a quiet moment. Mandana will laugh at him, teasing, saying it sounds strange coming from him, and then he will kiss her, roughly, and she will smile into it and hold him close to her.
They are a paradox. They are beauty and coarseness, violence and gentleness. Each of them is a strange mix of the two, and they reach out to those things in each other.
5
When they marry, just before Nero leaves on his first mining trip as captain of the Narada, Mandana finally understands the draw, the desire she had as a child to fill herself with all that is Romulus. It is her blood. She can no more escape that than she can the feeling tying her to Nero.
"H'ta-fvau," she whispers, and he brushes a loose strand of hair behind the point of her ear, "Come back."
"Of course," Nero says. So matter-of-fact. This doesn't surprise her. Nero is a matter-of-fact kind of man. He will always do what is necessary, and coming back home to her is that, always will be. She trusts him.
6
Mandana becomes a Senator, while Nero is away. She misses him, but she loves her work.
The night she dances for the Reman ambassador, she calls Nero, hair loose around her shoulders and face flushed, laughing. He feigns jealousy, and this makes her laugh all the harder, all emotion and adrenaline. She feels free, happy. This is the Romulus she wants to show the universe. When she tells him this, Nero smiles.
"What a beautiful Romulus it is," he says, and she presses a kiss to the screen.
"H'ta-fvau," she says.
"Of course."
7
The day Nero comes home, she's spent three hours in a meeting, another two speaking with Spock, the Vulcan ambassador, and the rest of the day on the Senate floor as they argue boundaries and trade routes. She is exhausted.
And then, he's there, sitting calmly in the main room of their home, reading, like he'd never left. The fatigue seeps out of her body in a second, and she lets out a shout of joy, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing every bit of skin she can reach.
Later, when they are in bed and she is pressed against his chest, held there by his arms and the cooling sweat of their skin, they will discuss their future, their past, and interplanetary politics, and Nero will run his hands through her hair as he always used to. Mandana thinks this is as it should be.
Nero falls asleep first, his breath evening out as his hand stills in her hair, fingers brushing softly against her temple. She winds her hands tighter around his chest, trying to keep him close.
In a month, he is gone again. It is not enough. Mandana knows all about duty and honor; it is the Romulan way, and she loves this, loves the way Nero binds himself to it. But it is not enough. She has just begun to remember the feeling of his skin, the sound of his voice. It is too soon.
She makes him promise-again-to come back. It is not that she does not trust him. She simply needs to hear the words.
"Of course."
There is no question in Nero's mind, and this comforts her.
8
Their ideas are not the norm, and they are not looked well upon. Mandana knows this; Nero knows this. And she should be grateful. He is home, has been for six months now, and will be until their child is born.
This should be enough.
It is, in many ways. The baby's room will face the lake. It is furnished as a high caste Romulan's should be, and Mandana chooses the color, a deep, soothing green. Nero places small stones, crystals and geodes he's collected on the Narada, in niches in the walls. Mandana has wished for this, quietly, and it is good.
But it is not everything. Mandana carries Romulus with her, just as much as Nero does, and they feel the brokenness of their people. They wish to be reunited with their family, and relations with Vulcan are not good.
Many accuse them and others who share their beliefs of relinquishing their identity, their freedom. There are those who say they wish to be subservient to Vulcan, to take up the teachings of Surak, to return to the way of life their ancestors rejected.
This is not the case. Mandana simply wants a universe in which her daughter will know things beyond their system, will reach out past the Empire and embrace all, as a friend, not as a belligerent, misunderstood enemy. She wants her child to grow up without the paranoia that has gripped her since her own childhood.
Mandana desires true freedom, if not for herself then for her family.
Ambassador Spock understands this. He is a good man, but sad. He has lost much. Mandana can almost feel the love, the heis'he, within him, though her own people lost practice in telepathy long ago. She wonders if, perhaps, this is his penance. And if this unity will help him to heal, Mandana has hope that it will repair the broken link between their peoples.
9
Nero brushes her hand as they enter the Praetor's chambers. She is tired, and the baby is kicking hard today-she has good Romulan blood, and there are times Mandana is joyful for this, but now it is simply a dull pain that she wishes would subside.
Nero does most of the talking. It is not often that he does; they are partners, and he knows language is her strength, not his. But he has been in space, has seen the evidence of the impending supernova in the Hobus system. He tells the Praetor that Vulcan has the technology to help them, that Ambassador Spock has promised to come in person to resolve the situation.
The Praetor refuses. He is a stubborn man, too set in the old ways. He reminds Mandana of her father.
Nero is angry, so, so angry. She holds his hand, fingers tracing patterns on his palm, calming, soothing. She sings for him, and he falls asleep. He is a passionate, caring, patriotic man. Her emotions are just as strong as his, but she has better control, can harness them and use them when it is necessary. He needs her, she knows. She keeps him under control, keeps him grounded. She is willing to do this. She loves him.
10
Mandana wakes up cold. Nero is gone.
She shouldn't be running. She knows she shouldn't be running; it isn't good, this late in her pregnancy. But Nero is gone, and she is tearing into the docking bay, searching for her husband's ship.
The Narada is gone, and- The Praetor sent him away. Not officially, of course, and the stubborn bastard denies it to her face when she bursts into his chambers, screaming at him. She has been trained in the martial arts, the battle tactics of the Romulans. She could break his neck before his guards could reach him. Even eight months pregnant, she is dangerous.
She has never desired to kill anyone before. Not with this force, this fury, this certainty. Something is wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
And there is nothing Mandana can do but wait.
She hates this, more than she has ever hated anything in her life. She feels the full force of the Romulus that she carries within her, and it is terrifying, what she is willing to do to keep her family together.
She thinks about going to the docking bay, about hijacking a shuttle and going after Nero, about dragging his ass back home and staying put, staying quiet, no matter what it would mean for their people.
She cannot do this. Instead, she comms him, nearing tears.
"H'ta-fvau," she whispers. "Please."
He doesn't say, "Of course." He says, "I love you."
This should make her feel better, should be a comfort. Should be sufficient. It is not.
It feels like goodbye, and Mandana is not ready for goodbye. She kisses the screen.
By the time the Praetor contacts Ambassador Spock, it is too late. She does not know how she knows this. But she does, with a painful, bone-deep certainty.
She is Mandana. She is Romulus. She loves it, has bent herself into its curves and edges, has worked tirelessly for it all her life. In the face of the death of all that she loves she whispers, "H'ta-fvau."