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romulanslutempire · 9 months

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The Terran Romulan. The Green-Bellied Turncoat. The Pointy-Eared Pretender.

These were the names people called her by now, among other worse things, although those particular slurs were restricted to being slung by the other last few remaining Romulans that didn’t die en masse with the rest of their brethren upon their humiliating defeat at the second Battle of Cheron lead and won by Khan Noonien-Singh during the second Federation-Romulan war. Their arrival to the battlefield too late. The senate’s decision after the decimation of their military forces and Remus’ destruction upon Khan’s forced entry into the Neutral Zone to enact his most brazen assault yet on that of Romulus itself being the universal agreement to commit mass suicide, to die with honor instead of disagrace, to spit in the face of the Khan Imperator’s offer to be subjugated under his regime being orders that hadn’t quite reached Sera and her fellow temporal operatives, who at the time had been a secret subdivision of the Tal Shiar tasked with slowing down Human progress and making advantageous changes to the timeline in the pursuit of Romulan superiority.

No one trusted her. Not really.

It felt silly to think it. Was laughable, really. Trust being something that, for a Romulan, was either non-existent or the most sacred of bonds. There was no in-between in her culture of deceit and concealment.

No, that’s not true. Someone did trust her. Manu Noonien-Singh trusted her and Sera had loved him for it, so much so that she had given him not just a heart filled with intensity, passion, and every other strong emotion she carried around with her, but her true name as well. Their exchanges of truths and revelation of secrets the ultimate commitment to someone like her. And then he died — the way James T. Kirk had died in a different timeline: coldly, impersonally, cruelly. The brilliant light fading from his kind eyes as she cradled him to her chest in her arms, bright red blood soaking through her shirt. And like before there was La’an, flooded with grief, trembling with anger, blinking back tears, applying pressure to the wound torn into his chest by the Gorn with the palms of her hands, telling him to look at her and that it was going to be okay, even though it obviously wasn’t.

And then he was gone.

“No…”

“La’an, I—”

She expected La’an to blame her, to explode like the supernova that, in yet another timeline, destroyed her homeworld, but instead all she did was press her forehead to Sera’s, gripping her tightly by the shoulders, like she was afraid that if she let her go she would lose her, too.

“Don’t,” La’an ordered, her voice firm but gentle. “It’s not your fault. I’ve been there. It’s not your fault. Do you hear me?”

It was a long way from where they’d started, Sera thought, all of it fraught with regret over what she’d done and the suffering her actions had caused to the woman who now called her “family”.

The only family she has left.

Khan didn’t count. They shared a name, and his Augmented ichor, albeit diluted to the point where La’an did not possess any of his enhanced genetic abilities, coursed through her veins, but Khan was not her family. La’an had told him as much when she finally revealed herself to be a leader of the Resistance, a coalition movement of several species, including Sera of Romulus and Spock of Vulcan, who had been opposed to his reign of tyranny from the start.

He was a killer who felt no remorse, unlike Sera, who had found herself overcome with it upon allowing herself to feel it rather than compartmentalize it, along with every other pesky emotion that interfered with the mission back when the mission was to wipe out humanity, whereas now… now it was to save them — the people who looked upon her with fear and loathing and suspicion, unable to see what La’an and Manu saw.

Of course, the only other exception, along with the Noonien-Singh siblings, was Spock. S’chn T’Gai Spock, to be specific. A name, much to her amusement and La’an’s annoyance, only she could pronounce, the Vulcan dialect not so different from her own native Romulan tongue and its variations, some of which, they surmised one evening in the science lab, were an offshoot of the ancient ancestors who bore them both.

With Spock’s offer to make himself available to her, Sera had learned that it was okay to walk in two worlds but to belong in neither. That she didn’t have to commit to being Terran or Romulan. She could simply just exist. It was harder for him, Spock truly being two halves of a whole with a (dead) Vulcan father and a (safe) Human mother, but on his own personal journey of growth, he had found that he was more than the sum of his parts, that self-acceptable enabling the hybrid to evolve into someone that Sera often sought out when she was struggling to strike a balance between who she had become and the strict Romulan moral code she was raised on regarding who is a friend and who is an enemy, that clarity of what is right and what is wrong no longer applying to a world that had become grey instead of black and white . The understanding he offered invaluable to her.

In exchange, though he had insisted one wasn’t required, Sera had shared her species’ technique of balancing logic and emotion. Showed him sterility could hinder as much as help. It was something that Spock had largely forgone, leaning into his Vulcan side as per societal expectations, and to control his own anger over everything that had happened, including the complicated loss of his father, whose head Khan had struck from his shoulders on the steps of the Vulcan Science Academy in front of a crowd that contained his wife and son, Amanda and Spock. The act separating the Humans (and Human Augments) of Earth, renamed Terra Nova, and the Vulcans of Vulcan, replacing mutual peace and prosperity with an oath of fealty as the pacifistic, scientifically-minded race of astoundingly intelligent and sensitive beings were subjugated (“united,” Khan had called it) under the rule of the Khanate of Earth and the Imperial Starfleet, whose totalitarian mission was to conquer the galaxy under his iron fist..

Sera, who had found solace on Vulcan at the time by posing as one, saw right through his transparent speech. He wanted to enslave the stars, not save them. He was Death, destroyer of worlds, and anyone who dared oppose him would feel the full force of his wrath.

That wasn’t how or where she and Spock had found each other, though. Her confession that she had been there that day and bore witness to Khan’s unending brutality came later, a lot later, after La’an had offered her a place aboard the ISS Puget Sound as her Chief of Security, the position she once held on the USS Enterprise before moving on and up (in terms of rank, anyway) to the USS Farragut to serve as first officer to James Tiberius Kirk.

The real James Kirk.

James Insane-Middle-Last-Name Kirk who Sera had shot dead in another life, only to gloat about it, bragging over the achievement that she had been the one to kill (a version of) Starfleet’s most famous captain. (A captain that, in this universe, had been stripped of rank and moved from prison planet to penal colony to prison ship for his opposition to Khan’s rule.) Just thinking about it makes her feel sick, her cheeks turning green as a wave of nausea flips around in her belly. That was then. This is now. With her mantra — Manu’s mantra — coming to mind, Sera forces herself to swallow the bile in her throat, grimacing as she chokes on the taste, her face abruptly turning to the side as she splutters and sobs with unimaginable grief before sagging against Manu’s chest just beneath his chin.

“Mr. Scott, beam us out. Beam us out now!” were the last words she heard before everything went dark.

When her eyes reopen, she’s greeted by the overhead fluorescent lighting of sickbay, blindingly white, with Doctor McCoy, better known as Bones, peering over her as he applies a hypospray into the shell of her right ear. She’s about to ask what happened, but before her mouth can even form the words all of it comes back to her in violent flashes of red, yellow, and shades of green.

They had been fleeing from Khan. Trying to regroup. The Puget Sound needed time for Montgomery Christopher Jorgensen What-A-Mouthful Scott, more affectionately known by the crew simply as “Scotty”, to repair her engines and other starship necessities like weapons and shields. His attack leaving them stranded in space — Gorn space. Not that they knew it. Gorn territory was ever-expanding and though Manu, being the self-proclaimed expert on the bipedal reptilian species, had mapped out as much of their hunting grounds as he could, not even the elder Noonien-Singh could have predicted, much less warned of, the arrival of a Gorn raider ship before it was too late.

Beaming aboard the ship was a suicide mission. Sera had told him as much, but Manu being Manu had only smiled and kissed her before stepping up onto the transporter pads, his trusty Gorn-dispatching sword strapped to his back.

“I have to do this,” Manu had said, willing her to understand. “I’m the only one who can.” His experience outlasting them for six cycles as a boy coupled with his personal crusade against them throughout his adult life inspiring confidence in his capabilities, but Sera could see the fear behind his eyes. That never went away and after the ordeal he endured, Sera had to admire his courage to face such a terrifying enemy again and again. And it was never once about revenge. No, it was always, always, always about helping people, sparing them from sharing his fate. His unconditional compassion the very reason Sera was still alive today.

“You’re not the only one,” Sera insisted, taking her place beside him. “Where you go, I go. Remember?” Unholstering her Romulan phaser, Sera powered it up in preparation, its sole setting that of a killshot. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I’m coming, too,” La’an said, appearing before them in her own tactical uniform, and wearing a look that brooked no argument, which Manu knew better than to protest against. After all, La’an was just as protective of him as he was of her, maybe even more so, considering she had spent over half of her life convinced she’d lost him when they’d lost their parents. A team of three other security officers followed behind her. “Mr. Kyle, if you please.”

“Aye, Captain. Beaming you down in three… two…”

The memories get murkier from there, but Sera wades on through. Sees herself blasting holes through lizardlike bodies, painting the ship’s walls yellow with their blood. Manu striking off a Gorn head and having to use all his might to do it, the physical exertion leaving him breathing hard. La’an unused to the stifling atmosphere aboard the starship, wiping blood and sweat and grime from her brow as they ventured deeper into the bowels of the ship, fighting their way to command central. Sera’s ears pricking up to the sound of strangled wails and terrified cries. All three of them investigating, only to discover a cell full of captives — men, women, and children. La’an contacting the Puget Sound for immediate evacuation. The Gorn surrounding them, hissing and clicking and spewing their infectious venom. A skirmish like no other. Primal. Instinctive. Unrelenting. It’s predators versus prey and neither the Gorn or the trio of crew from the ISS Puget Sound know who is which until Manu takes a wound that was meant for Sera, and all she can do is watch as his guts are yanked out of him.

“Judging from that look on your face, I’m guessin’ you don’t need me to tell you what happened,” Bones commented as he waved a dermal regenerator over her skin, absent of his customary cranky attitude as he did so.

“Where’s La’an?” Sera asked him, sitting up and swinging down off the biobed, uncaring that she’s missing half of her left ear or that her shoulder is dislocated or that her cheek is cut wide open, a trickle of bright green pouring out of it.

“In her quarters,” Bones supplied, his eyes narrowing as he watches her. “Goddammit, Sera! Would you sit back down?” he grumbled, his tolerance for impatient patients next to none.

“I have to see her,” Sera explained as she made her exit, half-expecting Bones to chase after her, medical instruments in hand, nagging her about his duty of care as a physician, no matter how big a pain in the ass Romulans, like Vulcans, can be. But instead all he did was sigh in exasperation, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“You get back here the second you’re done, got it? Don’t make me come and find you.”

Upon arriving outside La’an’s assigned quarters, Sera stiffened. The sound of agonized screaming and the breaking of furniture letting her know exactly what she’s in for as she overrides the lock on her door and slips inside, sealing it shut again behind her. The oriental vases that once decorated the shelves are shattered completely, just like the glass coffee table they used to play Mahjong together while drinking kali-fal. Plants have been upended. Lamps broken. Trinkets wrecked. And in the center of the chaos is La’an pacing back and forth like a lion in a cage, looking for something else to unleash herself upon, but all that’s left is Sera.

“I have to go back.”

“What are you talking about?” La’an asked, not understanding. Her rage morphing into confusion and concern. “Go back where?”

“In time.” Something that she hasn’t been able to do since Romulus found a new ruler in Joachim, Khan’s right hand man, who gifted him the planet after the Augments sacked it, stealing their technology, including their plasma weapons. “The Department of Temporal Alterations on Romulus has the device I require to do it, but…”

“Romulus is a no-go zone.”

Sera gave a shrug. “You can’t turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.” It was one of the first lessons she learned as a time traveling assassin. “Commander Charvanek and Sub-Commander Tal can take me there. No one knows their way around the former Neutral Zone like them. We just need a big enough to distraction to draw Joachim's attention away from the drop zone. And since Krinn still owes me a favor or two... I figure he and I can work something out. Khan doesn't know about the technology and even if he did he'd never be able to access it. The security system wouldn't allow it.”

“Imperial Starfleet knows your tricks. You’ll be shot out of the stars before you can get boots on the ground, you know that,” La’an informed her, walking through the wreckage. “I’m not sanctioning this.”

“Well then,” Sera started with a smirk that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not asking for your permission.”

“Sera.”

“What are we even doing?”

“Surviving.”

“And what about living? Sure, we’ve had moments of it, but this war with Khan is unwinnable, and even if it wasn’t by the time it’s over there won’t be a world to live in. Not like there was before. That is what we’re fighting for, isn’t it? The way things used to be before Admiral Pike made the wrong call, not just with the Romulans but with the Botony Bay.”

“It was a grievous error in judgment,” La’an stated terseley, her tone indicating the words she does not say: It was stupid. He should have known better. It got him killed. “One that he paid for with his life,” she reminded Sera, referring to the reactor explosion that had killed a number of others as well, people that Pike had tried (and failed) to save while she struck a deal with Khan, agreeing to join him in exchange for him saving the lives of those who were still left to save onboard, including Spock and Samuel Kirk, both of whom now served with her on her own ship: a gift from Khan that she’d christened the Puget Sound II in honor of her fallen family, the starship Imperial Starfleet’s finest after her flagship the ISS Khan’s Wrath. But where Khan had intended for her to use it to do harm, La’an had used it to help, the vessel an essential resource to the Alien Underground and the Resistance.

“I never thought I would say this,” Sera began, hefting out a sigh and settling her hands on her hips, “but… the galactic universe needs the Federation. It needs—”

“—hope,” La’an finished for her, fresh tears stinging at her eyes.

Sera nodded. “I used to hate Starfleet for its shining optimism. On Romulus, I was raised to believe that it made you weak and foolish, but I realize now how wrong we were. It was never a weakness. It was strength.”

The Federation sought knowledge and understanding. Khan sought power and domination. The Federation charted the unknown to explore strange new worlds. Khan charted the unknown to conquer new territory. The Federation embraced new civilisations. Khan made them bend the knee. The Federation taught that if you could find a way to empathize with an enemy then they could one day become a friend. Khan taught that if you tested him then you would feel his unbridled fury.

“If you change the timeline, you and I will be enemies again,” La’an whispered, averting her eyes at the crack in her voice. It wasn’t a reason for Sera not to go through with her plan, but it warranted pointing out all the same. “You’ll remember all of this, but I won’t.”

“Which is why I’ll use what I know to make sure it never happens again,” Sera promised. She then closed the remaining distance between them, extending the arm that she still had complete use of, and out La’an reached with her own, the two women clasping each other by the forearm, a Roman handshake. “As for you and me, I won you over once — twice, if you consider the time you thought I was just a sad conspiracy theorist believing in little green men from Mars,” Sera laughed. “I have every confidence that I’ll be able to do it again someday. Time is my speciality, after all.”

Grudgingly, La’an gave a snort. It wasn’t Sera’s finest hour, no, but it was where it had all began. And until Sera could make good on her irritatingly charming promise, it would be where it ended, at least as far as La’an was concerned. Her fakery of her death at the Noonien-Singh Institute of Cultural Advancement to cover her tracks the last time La’an would see her until years later when rumors of an all too familiar Romulan brought the ISS Puget Sound to Freecloud to chase down a lead that would eventually bring her to Sera.

Sera who had pretended not to know her. Sera who had her convinced that she was the prime universe counterpart of the Sera she had met in 21st century Toronto. Sera who had joined La’an because it was the only chance she would ever have of saving her people and her homeworld, if not in this life then another. Sera who had initially only gone along with her to finally get her shot at Khan. Sera who had agreed to help because she knew what La’an was capable of. Sera who pissed her off. Sera who made her smile. Sera who had come through for her and for her crew time and time again. Sera who had changed so much. Sera who had gone from being a rationalization (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) to a true ally who was loyal to her. Sera who loved her brother and became her family, too. Sera who was willing to sacrifice herself for the hope of a better tomorrow.

“We have our work to do.”

#*#i... have no idea how to write character studies and fic anymore. what even are tenses? i blame RP #all i know is that i was hit with the feels and this is apparently what happens at 1:00AM on my notes app #don't ask me why i started at the end instead of the beginning lmfao but here we are #au #star trek: au new worlds #you can tell where i fell off with this which is probably why if/when i do ever rewrite it properly i should probably plot it out #especially since things are liable to change #la’an/manu/sera having the octavia/bellamy/echo dynamic is everything 2 me #for context: this is a 5 years later setting #star trek au #verse: destroyer of worlds

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