Apologies [Thelos/Archangel]

Archangel only stopped pacing when her knee threatened to give way beneath her and then just stood, leg trembling. Her head hurt, spinning around with guilt and anger. She ran a shaking hand over her hair.

"When I was young. I was only five... My mother paid a failed doctor to perform reconstructive surgery on me to remove my brow ridges. He didn't do it right. He took too much bone off. Every time I hit my head off something, I would end up fracturing my skull. It was only after I joined the service that a doctor repaired it for me, putting back what had been taken away."

Medical malpractice at that level? Thelos was internally twitching. Secretly, he was finding himself wanting to personally confront both Archangel's mother and the doctor who had done such a thing. He wouldn't hurt them... his Hippocratic Oath prevented that... but he'd have no qualms about giving them a piece of his mind.

"That... is absolutely horrible," the astonished Andorian said. "Your mother was deluded enough to inflict that kind of damage because of her racial prejudice?" He almost couldn't believe it to be true... but then again, he had a feeling there was a hard story behind this woman's internalised racism.

"There is no excuse for something like that... none in the slightest." The thought that someone would do that to a child...

"I am here and telling you that you did not deserve that. You did not deserve whatever it was that pounded the incorrect notion that hybrids are subpar or lacking somehow. They were wrong, Archangel. Dead wrong."

"She was ashamed of me," Archangel said softly. "She's a JAG officer on Starbase 173, along the Neutral Zone. She was ashamed that she had let a Romulan bed her. She loved him, but it was only a show of dominance over another species to him." She looked away. "Hybrids are trophies, proof that Romulans are superior. That's why she was ashamed. She wanted to pass me off as Vulcan rather than Romulan.

"Hybrids are not trophies... no one's a trophy, not by birth," Thelos said evenly. He felt a growing bubble of rage growing under his skin, but wouldn't let it show. To do so wouldn't help anything, and would probably cause the opposite effect that he wanted.

"Your mother was so wrong about you," he continued. "No right to be ashamed of who or what you are, and absolutely no right to force you to go through a procedure like that."

Archangel pulled a face, snorting in a humourless manner. "She was my mother. I was five years old. She could do what she liked to me and made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with me." Her expression softened slightly. "The engineering crew on the station looked after me where my mother didn't. I used to follow them around their duty. I think it amused them." She shook her head, running a hand over her hair. "I'm sure she'd be delighted to see me now. She always told that I would fail."

"Generally, we refer to that as child abuse," Thelos said gently. He hadn't quite put that term forward yet, but her description of things left no doubt in his mind about it. Things were starting to make more sense, and click together. If Archangel was a product of an abusive mother, then her self-depircating and self-imposed impossible standards made more sense.

"You don't have to impress someone like that," he stated. "And if I'm perfectly honest, I think she'd consider that you failed even if you were the most highly respected admiral in the fleet. There's no use holding yourself to that. All it'll do is cause you stress and pain."

"I may not have to impress her any more, but I still have to live up to the expectations of everyone else," Archangel countered. "I was one of the best engineers in the Fourth Fleet before I was XO on the Chin'Toka. I have to deliver the same level of performance on the bridge as I did in the engine room. I still have to be a captain of a starship, an diplomatic liason to the Praetor of the Star Empire, an operative for the Intelligence services and on top of that, mother and wife for my family!"

"And you do quite a fine job of it, Archangel," Thelos said firmly. For a moment, he fell silent, then took a few steps over to the wall. "Your ship and crew is in excellent shape," he said, with a slap to it with the palm of his hand for emphasis. "Your daughters... well, I can only affirm what I know of them, which is that you've raised two very wonderful, sweet girls that you should be very proud of."

"As for intelligence, the Praetor... and everything else.. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be standing here if you'd failed there, so there's that. Any further expectations you have of yourself are superfluous and irrational... I mean, look at me. I lost something very, very important to me on the Chin'Toka, and even I don't equate that as a failure on your part."

Archangel sighed softly, laying her hands on the biobed and leaning on her arms as she closed her eyes. This conversation was leaving her feeling drained. The guilt in her chest was black and choking. There was logic in what Thelos was telling her, but so many years of believing what she had made it hard to acknowledge that logic. She knew that the loss of an antennae was a very serious condition for an Andorian and, along with everything else, she blamed herself for the suffering that had befallen the young medical officer.

She let out a long, slow breath. This wasn't an argument to be won in a day. "Thelos, maybe you can forgive me for what happened on the Toka. Maybe Gabriel can. Maybe his family can. But I can't."

Well, she wasn't up and screaming anymore. Thelos took this to meant that at least part of what he was telling her was resonating somewhere in that Romulan's heart, though he didn't know how strongly or how much more he was going to have to reassure her on different occasions that she was very much a good person, captain, mother, among everything else that had been put on her plate.

It was going to take a lot of time, and Thelos wondered how he could practically talk someone into re-wiring something that had been ingrained since birth... but he had to try, and at least it seemed to be working, a bit.

"No one's expecting you to forgive yourself overnight, Archangel," the Andorian said as he rested both hands on the biobed next to her. "Obviously it's hard... but I know there's a part of you that wants to forgive yourself... or you wouldn't be here having this conversation with me," he said softly.

"My Antenna will grow back..." Thelos began again. Eventually, I hope... "The crew that was saved will go on with their lives... your husband has recovered, and life, though it had a rough start, goes on."

The young Romulan closed her eyes, swallowing hard. Thankfully, Aria was sound asleep, curled up at the head of the biobed with her starship toy cuddled to her chest. Archangel didn't have to worry about her daughter seeing her cry.

"No, Thelos," she murmured. "Even if I want it, there's no forgivness for someone like me, not after everything I've done. There never will be."

A chagrined but half-smiling look crossed Thelos's face. He rested his hands on her forearms with a light grip and looked the Romulan dead in the eye. "Ah, but there is," he assured her. "There most certainly is. There are very, very few people in this world that don't deserve any level of forgiveness. You are not one of them, not by any stretch of the imagination."

He released her arms- he didn't want her to think he was being creepy. "There's so much ore to you than any mistakes you may have made. We all have things we wish we could take back. If I told myself I didn't deserve forgiveness for every patient that died under my watch, then I'd probably be in the same state as you."

As Thelos attempted to make eye contact with her, Archangel looked away, the knot of guilt still too tight for that. She wanted to take a step back from him, but her feet stayed where they were. She looked at her boots, the stray thought that she was going to need to polish them soon crossing her mind.

She gave a soft, humouless laugh. "You don't know half of it. Not even Gabriel knows half of it. I'm tired of all the secrets I have to keep, the lies I have to live." She looked over at Aria. "All I wanted to do was keep her and her sister safe."