Through A Fogged Mirror…
Everything was so… bright. That was the first thing D’Kera had noticed about the station when she had come aboard. Were Terran ships so well lit, she wondered? It was hard to imagine, but maybe a lifetime of stories about Terrans lurking in the shadows had just colored her perceptions. After all, 'bright’ did not necessarily mean pleasant.
The hiss of the door tore her from her thoughts. Was it another visitor come to gawk at the D’Kera that seemed so different from the criminal whose reputation apparently extended well beyond Romulan space? Or was it the Terran, or Terrans, she had been sent to expose? If they blended in so well, the guards may not even think to stop them until it was too late. It didn't help that her disruptor had been lost in the scuffle on her ship, not that she had ever liked the damnable thing anyway.
The visitor was a pale man dressed in a Romulan uniform. His face bore the same sunbursts tattoo that adorned her own visage, and without realizing it she smiled.
“Nice ink,” she said. She had thought it a simple statement, but the man seemed flustered regardless. Color rose in his cheeks, and his expression became something curiously close to fury. The room around her suddenly seemed very small, and very open. But the flash of anger subsided, and the man advanced slowly into the room.
“Do you know me?” His tone was intense, the same way the woman had been. Right before she had attempted murder.
“I… No. Should I?” The stranger just stared at her, his expression a mask. In the bright light of the Federation room his eyes seemed to flicker like plasma fire. D’Kera couldn't look away. Those eyes, so fixed on her, so intent and alive with all of the emotion he refused to let show on his face. It wasn't long before his gaze became unbearable, and the silence agonizing.
“What's your name?”
The mans brow furrowed. “What?”
“Everyone here seems to know my name,” she said, trying to hide her trembling fingers. “What's yours?”
Those eyes bore down on her again. She thought she would be relieved when the man let his emotions show, but this relegation was somehow even worse. The woman on the ship had hated her. This young man looked as though he loathed everyone and every thing that had lent the slightest contribution to her most distant ancestor rising from the ichorous muck of her ancient homeworld to begin the work of creating a species of which she would eventually be counted amongst. His stare was a monument to hatred in its purest expression, and D’Kera couldn't help but wither beneath it.
“Davin,” the man finally hissed. “My name. Is Davin.”
In that moment she was convinced that she was going to die. That this was something like the blood-debts of the Klingons, and that if the young man, this Davin, couldn't repay himself upon the right D’Kera then he would just take whichever one he could get his hands on.
“H-hey,” she began to stammer. “I’m not… Whatever happened to you, whatever she did, I'm not her, okay? I don't even know you. So whatever… whatever you're thinking about doing, just don't, okay? Just… Just please, don't!”
The man's expression softened, just a little, and it was only when she sighed that D’Kera realized she hadn't been breathing. The young man looked… defused, at least, in a way she hadn't managed with the woman. She watched him pace by the door, watched his uncertain motions, his half started exclamations, watched him run himself down until he stood still in front of the door. His mask was cast aside, his uncertainty laid bare.
“I…” The thought died as soon as it left his mouth, but another followed close behind. “...Do you have any family? A husband, or… a child?”
D’Kera blinked. “Family? Well… No, nothing like that. It's just me and my ship… And I guess now that means it's just me. What about you?”
“...No.” Try as she might, she could make no sense of his face. “No, I, uhm… No.”
They shared the silence once again.
D’Kera spoke first. “When I was… well, probably about your age… I did meet someone. A military man. He was… Or maybe I just thought he was…” She sighed. “We tried to start a family, but it didn't work out. We were just… too different, I think… Stars, listen to me pouring my heart out to you. I'm probably old enough to be your mother.”
There was a sudden sound, a gush of fragrant mist, and when D’Kera looked up the man was holding a beat up looking flask and wiping his face with his sleeve.
“What the Void?!”
“Sorry, I, ah… Sorry. I should… I should go.” Before she could even try to stop him the young man had rushed out the door and turned down the hallway, leaving D’Kera to her confusion and the drink he had showered her hair in. With a resigned shrug she started for the bathroom, and the sonic shower.
“Hmph… ‘Davin’…”
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