Thriss complied completely with Ro’s orders. She didn’t cry, offer protestations of innocence or petulant sarcasm; she stared off at nothing. Neither did she resist being led away to the holding cell and once she was there, she immediately lay down and fell asleep. Ro wrote her incident report, ignoring the semiregular pages from Councillor zh’Thane. She told the night shift corporal to take the names of anyone—meaning zh’Thane—who wanted to talk with her. Or let them make morning appointments and she would deal with their grievances then. From her monitor, she periodically checked in on the sleeping Thriss until she was satisfied this round was over. At least until Thriss woke up and then, with any luck, Ro would be back in her quarters and the counselor could manage any outbursts. Overall, Ro had guardedly optimistic expectations, though Councillor zh’Thane might still make her life a living hell in retribution for locking up Thriss.
When the therapist arrived, Ro put aside her usual distrust of counselors and shook Lieutenant Commander Phillipa Matthias’s offered hand. The counselor met her eyes directly when they exchanged names, unapologetically bypassed the usual social niceties and went straight to business. Impressive,Ro thought. If Matthias didn’t employ the usual touchy-feely, mind game hocuspocus techniques, she might look forward to involving the counselor in more of her investigations. Ro had developed a healthy dislike for mental health professionals during her incarceration. “Could this be latent anger against your sense of childhood abandonment?”had been Ro’s favorite query. Excuse me? A sense of abandonment? How about wholesale repression of your people as justification for being a little pissed off!
When Matthias asked for background information, Ro launched into the story of the bar fight and the parameters of the odd meeting with Councillor zh’Thane. Matthias halted Ro before she could get into specifics.
“Councillor zh’Thane’s perspective, while illuminating, is still her perspective. Thriss deserves an unbiased evaluation. Knowing that there’s some precedent for Thriss’ behavior is enough to get started. You have her in a holding cell. That would be…?” She gestured, inquiring at the four doors in Ro’s office that led deeper into the security station.
Before Ro could reply, a dark, bearded Bajoran man, hair threaded with gray, entered from the Promenade carrying a squirming toddler—a girl—and holding a young boy’s hand. Ro didn’t need to ask who the children belonged to: they had the same hazel green eyes she’d been looking into for the past few minutes.
“Sibias…?” Matthias said, clearly fishing for an explanation.
She nodded toward her guest. “Lieutenant Ro, station security.”
“Chon Sibias, Commander Matthias’s husband, and these are our children,” he said, shifting his daughter’s weight from one shoulder to another. “Pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant.”
Whenever Ro met a Bajoran, she peered at their earring to see if she could discern the individual’s family or geographical origins. The unique characteristics of Chon’s earring intrigued her, but before she could inquire further, the chubby-fisted girl wriggled out of her father’s arms and threw her arms around her mother’s legs, nearly tipping her backward.
“I couldn’t sleep, Mommy!” she wailed.
“The children wanted to say good night, Phillipa,” Sibias offered apologetically. His wife threw a hand against the wall to maintain her balance. The boy, about eight, shuttled behind his father, peeking out from behind his legs with shy seriousness. His rumpled pajamas and mussed hair indicated he might have been roused from bed to accompany his sister on this late-night visit.
“My room is scary. There are monsters in my closet,” she pouted, petulantly extending her lip.
Brushing the child’s tangled dark curls out of her face, Matthias dropped to one knee and refastened a crookedly done-up nightgown. “Mireh. Your father will make sure you have a wristlight so you can check under your bed as often as you like, but you need to go back to your bed. No dropping your tooth cleaner in the replicator and pretending you can’t find it. No hiding Walter in Arios’s closet. Your father will say no if you ask to sleep in our room,” she said over the child’s head, directly to her husband. “Right, Sibias?”
He rolled his eyes in mock protest. “You say that like she’s the one in charge, Phillipa.”
“Isn’t she?” Matthias said, arching an eyebrow.
“My father used to play the klavionto keep me from being afraid,” Ro interjected. She crouched down beside Matthias.
“Maybe your dad has something special like that he can do for you.”
“Hey, you have funny wrinkles like my dad and the kids in my class,” Mireh said, pointing at Ro’s nose. “And like me!” She touched her finger to her own nose and began giggling.
“Mireh has never been—I’ve never been—around a lot of Bajorans. It’s still a novelty to her,” Sibias explained.
Matthias stretched an arm toward her son. “I’d like to say good night before you leave, Arios.” The boy twisted his head into his shoulder, blushing. Sibias lifted him by the collar and pushed him toward his mother. She caught Arios’s elbow and pulled him into her arms, feathering his forehead with kisses.
Ro stood up, giving the mother and her children some room to be affectionate. Normally such scenes of domesticity pressed all the wrong buttons with Ro. Having been orphaned young and having grown up in the resettlement camps, Ro had known little of family life, the closest thing being the time she served on the Enterpriseand she had more or less messed that relationship up. But this family, for some reason, didn’t annoy her so much. Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age.She stood next to Sibias, who appeared content to let his wife have some one-on-one time with their children.
“You didn’t grow up on Bajor?” she asked him.
“I was an orphan in the Karnoth resettlement camp, or so the records say,” he said matter-of-factly. “Smuggled off when I was Arios’s age. I grew up far away from here on a Federation colony. While Phillipa is stationed here, I’m hoping to find out exactly where my family comes from.” He twirled the earring chain between his thumb and forefinger, as if this piece of his heritage was at once familiar and foreign.
Ro had heard far too many stories like Sibias’ during her years away from Bajor. Thousands of misplaced children were spirited away from starvation and disease only to discover as adults that they lacked cultural bearings. “Start near the Tilar Peninsula in the Hedrickspool Province. These markings,” she pointed to several ridges and runes, “they’re unique to an area just outside the outback.”
He touched her arm, his eyes full of questions she knew he couldn’t ask. “Thank you.”
“If I can help…”
“I know. I’ll stop by sometime. I’d like to talk with you.”
With a reluctant sigh, Commander Matthias sent both children scurrying back to their father. “I might be all night,” she warned her husband.
Sibias nodded. “I plan on attending the first service in the morning. Will you be back by then?”
“I hope so, I—” With eyes watering, Matthias pinched her lips tightly together; she swallowed a yawn with a gulp. “So tomorrow night?”
“We’ll try to go out again.” He kissed her. “You know how much I hate sleeping without you.” They exchanged smiles and she watched as her little family departed.
“Let’s go see Thriss,” Matthias said, letting Ro lead her out of the office. As they walked, Ro guessed the holding area wouldn’t be the most pleasant spot to work from; it was designed to accommodate prisoners and guards, not host therapy sessions. “The visuals can be transmitted into the conference room if you’d rather work in comfort.”