Author’s Note: This came to me, as most of my ideas do, right before I fell asleep the night after I watched both episodes of Unification in succession, as well as played the Romulan campaign on Star Trek Armada. It’s short, and I’m leaving it as it is right now, but I’m leaving it open for expansion if I want to. As you can obviously tell, this is just prior to Unification and thus, holds spoilers for it.

And I wrote this in about an hour, so be kind!

And of course, I do not own the characters or other stuff from Star Trek. This is entirely a work of fiction coming from my warped brain.

She looked blankly at the padd in front of her, and she frowned. Bringing a hand up to her neck, she scratched it, as she often did when in deep concentration. She leaned back in her chair, bringing the padd closer to her eyes, which narrowed as she skimmed through the data on it for what seemed to be the umpteenth time in the past half an hour.

She was frustrated, angered and obviously irked at the contents. Failure was not one of her common tendencies, but according to the information, she had done just that. She scowled, dropping the padd on the desk, closing her eyes as if to purge herself of the foul image of the Romulan text on the screen.

She crossed her arms, her hands firmly grasped onto the other arm’s elbow. The light cloth like fabric of her uniform crinkled and creased with the motion. The shoulders were still pointed, her uniform still a uniform, the crest of the bird holding two orbs in each of its claws adoring the center of the uniform shining proudly in the dim light of her office.

“Senators Pardek, Tel’Karn, I need to see you,” she called, more calmly then she felt, into the air. She had activated a Romulan Intelligence commlink, secure to only high ranking officials in the Romulan army and whom they choose to contact. “Immediately.”

She scratched her neck again, looking at the small picture of her father that she kept on her desk. Now he was a Romulan. Her mother? Well, she was glad that the human was dead. And she was glad that she was the one to help kill her. Oh, how long ago. It seemed like an eternity, but it was only, in reality, 21 human years ago. She smiled wickedly at the thought, her eyes blazing with fond remembrance at the stories her father told her about that time.

“Half-Romulan by birth,” she murmured, standing up, clasping her hands together, wringing them slowly, “All Romulan by choice.”

She began to pace, her combat boots echoing off the ground. Her office was sparse; she didn’t use it that often. She didn’t need the luxury that most of the Senators needed to be happy. But she wasn’t a politician. She was a warrior. A blonde haired, human faced warrior. And like all good warriors, the more she dwelled on her failure, the more she swelled with anger. Her eyes flittered back to the padd lying on her desk, sitting there, its words mocking her, and she muttered a string of Romulan under her breath.

Shooting death rays at the report with her eyes, she wasn’t distracted until the door pushed open with a faint whisper. She blinked as she slowly brought her head to eye level with the two senators standing in the doorway. Pardek, the short one, looked intimidated, almost feeling her inevitable wrath, while the taller female, Tal’Karn seemingly looked interested in the coming discussion.

“Senators,” she breathed, her eyes still furious.

“Subcommander Sela,” Pardek coughed, refusing to meet her gaze. “What…brings us to you? You called us out of a very important Senate meeting.”

“And for that, I am sorry. But I just received the progress report on the operation, and it seems that it has failed.”

“Failed, Subcommander?” Tel’Karn asked, with a mild tone of scepticism in her voice, “But it cannot have failed! It was foolproof!”

“Well then it proves that you are indeed fools, senators!” she hissed violently, beginning to shake with rage. She quickly stopped herself, closing her eyes and trying to think of a more rational way to approach the subject. She let out her breath, and calmly opened her eyes. She turned her slender figure away from the two senator figures. Without a word, she put a hand on the desk, and began to trace the edge of it, all the way back to her seat. With a sigh, she looked back at the two senators.

“Sela, please, listen to me,” Pardek pleaded, “Getting him here was harder than we imagined! He didn’t take the bait of the Senate claiming that it wants reunification! He is not using his human side to solve his problems – he does tend to make decision based on emotions on occasion – his father was like your…”

“Don’t mention her!” Sela said quietly, in a voice more lethal than a sehlat’s fangs. “She was a traitor to the Star Empire, and she doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in any breath by a Romulan!”

The moment he spoke, Pardek became quiet, and quickly fell a couple of steps behind Tel’Karn.

“We will get him here, Sela,” Tel’Karn stated, rationally. “It just may take a little time, that’s all.”

“Time is something we lack,” Sela shot back, standing up once again. “Soon, the Federation will be all over us once they find out what we’re doing. We can’t let that happen; there are too many parties involved in this. The government, the military, the Tal Shiar, everybody. It will be our necks on the line, and I cannot let this happen.

“I will not.”

She glanced at the two senators, who were standing intently, both each wanting to do their part, but both wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. Sela’s ruthlessness had made her a Subcommander after only 7 years in the Romulan military. She had aided in her mother’s murder when she was four, lead successful raids on both Federation and Klingon outposts, and she had even exposed two spies working for the Federation.

Sela scowled, looking at the two robed figures of the senators. Pompous and arrogant. They were eager to aid her in the plot to get Ambassador Spock to Romulus under the false pretence of mutual reunification of the Vulcans and Romulans, while they staged a takeover of their sister planet.

The key…the key was the false pretence. Her eyes widened, adopting a shine. She had the key in her hand.

“Pardek, you are acquaintances with Spock, are you not?”

“Yes, Sela.”

“Very well,” she calmed and paused, raising a hand to the back of her pointed ear. “Pardek, contact him. Tell him the truth – that there is a growing underground movement that wants our two cultures to reunite. Tell him that they want him to explain Vulcan mannerisms to them. He has your trust.”

Pardek let out a grateful smile, “Yes, Sela. I will do so.” He inclined his head in a short bow, which Sela returned.

“You’ll need to get back to the session before many of the…softer,” she spat, “senators suspect anything. Those who need to know, already know.”

Pardek inclined his head again, before walking out the door quickly. Tel’Karn, amused by the whole situation, began to follow suit, taking long strides out of Sela’s office.

“Tel’Karn, wait a minute.” Sela asked, quietly. She was delighted when Tel’Karn obliged, looking at her in the eyes. His eyes began to burn with the hatred of failure, something that kept pricking at the back of her mind. “I need to know something.”

“Yes, Sela?” Tel’Karn asked with a hint of urgency in her voice, “What is it? I really must be getting back to the Senate like Pardek.”

“Was it really Spock’s fault that the phase failed? We’ve known each other for quite some time, and I know that we can both…shift the blame for something else.”

Tel’Karn blinked, obviously phased by Sela’s blunt comment, “Uh, no,” her pause was long and awkward, “We assumed that Spock would be acting emotionally – we know that reunification was important to both him and Sarek…”

Sela scoffed, quickly moving her head which made her short cropped hair uncharacteristically flail in rhythm. “Important as it may be, it was your job to get him here. And you failed. I failed. I don’t like failure.” The hard edge to her voice became razor sharp as she sat back down, fighting an uncontrollable demon inside of her that claimed for Tel’Karn’s failure to be rectified.

“I…I know you don’t, Subcommander,” the senator stuttered in grievance, truly regretting her mistake. Sela set her mouth in a grim line at this admittance, however slim it was.

She then sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, her sharp elbow digging into the metal of her desk’s surface. She released the pressure, and the small white stars in her eyes disappeared. The first thing she laid eyes on were the picture of her father. Being betrayed by the mother of his child…it had left him cold, just as she was now. Both him and her never regretted the death of one Natasha Yar, human, but it was the betrayal that always sat in their minds.

The silence etched between them was thick and heavy, from the standing senator to the sitting warrior.

“You know, I think I have a premonition of a news headline in tomorrow’s daily report.”

Tel’Karn stiffened, “What would that be, Sela?”

“Well, I think it will go something like…’Romulan Senator A Federation Double-Agent’. Of course, I don’t have a…flair for the headlines like reporters do.”

The senator’s look was one of pure shock. Then her eyes filled with amusement, “So, the Praetor was right when he assumed that one of the senators was indeed a Federation spy! If I may be so bold…who is it?”

Sela shifted her weight in her seat and tilted her head, quietly observing the violet robed senator, quietly standing there with her attention peaked. “You.”

Sela’s hand shot up from her waist, holding her trusted Disrupter. She could only look on at the immobilized figure of Tel’Karn as she pressed the trigger. Immediately, a steady stream of jet-green plasma shot out of the barrel of the weapon, hitting Tel’Karn straight in the neck. The force of the impact sent the senator flying backwards, limbs flailing uncontrollably, her body in a green aura from the weapon. Still not relenting the stream, Sela stood up as Tel’Karn hit the door with astonishing force, a crack of her spine shattering upon impact of the unmoving door. She crumpled to the floor, the flesh beginning to melt around the hole piercing through her neck. Sela finally let go of the trigger, looking at the fallen figure. She then drew her Disrupter up and fired again, this time, drawing a vertical line on the senator’s prone body, leaving burn marks as it charred the skin.

Finally lowering her weapon, Sela looked at bloodless wounds she had inflected. The flesh around her neck had bubbled and twisted, peeled and exposed the Romulan larynx. Distain crossed her features as she began to walk towards the corpse on the ground, her eyes filled with satisfaction.

“I do not like failure, senator.”

Romulus would take over Vulcan.

The legendary Spock would be killed in the process.

A leg of the Federation would be crippled. Without a leg, the Federation could only hop.

And best of all – Failure had been rectified.

A cold smile swept upon her features – it was the same smile that her father had given when her mother laid broken, burnt and bleeding upon Romulan soil.