Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Warrior's Drink"

"I must bear my dishonor alone," the boy said.

"That is not true," the old man replied.

***

The old man, actually, was not an old man at the time.  He was in his prime, a virile bear of a man serving aboard the starship Intrepid under the command of Captain Deighan.  Sergey Rozhenko and Deighan did not see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and most of the time it didn't matter, but when their ship answered a distress call from the Klingon outpost at Khitomer, Sergey finally found the courage to put his foot down.  "Deighan, my friend," he'd said, "if you do not do this, I will be forced to renounce you.  You understand, this will be difficult for me, as you will still be my captain.  But I will make it work."

But he was an old man at heart, following traditional ways even if the world around him, the whole galaxy, was crying out for something new.  He had never wanted to serve in Starfleet.  He had wanted his bearlike frame to stay on Gault, where his family had been farmers for three generations, once they'd finally joined, seemingly, the rest of humanity in space.  None of them had spent any real time with aliens, either, in all that time.  Farmers lead solitary lives, after all. 

He joined Starfleet all the same.  Something new announced itself into his life almost immediately, when he was asked to participate in an officer exchange program.  A Klingon named Moztar was his counterpart.  Moztar was old, a warrior well past his prime, said to be curious of things that had eluded him, experiences he had once found distasteful.  Such as spending any time among humans and not actively wanting to kill them.  Sergey had realized, "I have met Bolians.  I have even had Vulcan instructors.  But Klingons?  Never in my wildest dreams...!"  Sometimes, when he'd read the stories about them, as a boy on Gault, he'd wondered if Klingons weren't somehow like his Russian ancestors, ruthless and cunning, always engaged in some intrigue, always on the brink of war, too proud to ever admit weakness, too eager to drag everyone down with them...And suddenly he was being asked to brief this Moztar fellow, who stunk of some...powerful alcohol he couldn't even begin to identity.  And his ancestors had known strong drink, too!  "Try to remember," he'd said, uselessly, "humans won't be familiar with...anything you know."  Moztar had nodded, and Sergey had spent a great deal of time trying to decide what exactly he'd meant to convey with the gesture.

The time spent aboard a Klingon ship?  The T'kuvma had smelled almost as bad as Moztar, which would be Sergey's lasting impression of it.  He was too overwhelmed by the whole experience to remember anything else.  If anyone so much as stepped toward him, he shrank back.  He had been totally useless, and doubtless set back the program decades.  He never found out what Moztar had accomplished.  He never told his son about it.  He never talked about it at all, but it was the foundation of all that Sergey was to become.

Years later, Deighan feigned outrage, but then replied, "I don't have much choice in the matter, now do I?  Keep those engines running smoothly, Rozhenko.  We may need to beat a hasty retreat yet."

They found virtually nothing left alive at the outpost, except a frightened Klingon youth, who looked as if the world had ended, which of course for all intents and purposes it had.  He'd lost his parents that day, after all, and his honor.  His first words, and indeed his only words for weeks afterward, were about how his people would never accept him again, and that had broken Sergey's heart.  He resolved on the spot to remedy the situation, as much as possible.  He resigned his commission and he and his wife began to raise the boy as their own.

On Gault, the old ways died hard.  The boy was rejected, and so was Sergey, something he'd never anticipated.  These were people he'd grown up with, who knew him as well as he knew them, as well as their families three generations back had known each other.  And they turned their back on him.  The boy was the enemy to them.  They had all heard the stories of Klingons who raided worlds like theirs.  Gault had never been threatened, but colonists live with the fear whether they experience it or not.  This is why stories are told, to keep alive old wounds.  Or so these people seemed to think.  Sergey grew disgusted. 

His only solace was the vigor with which his son maintained his Klingon ways.  All Sergey could do was stay out of his way, sometimes, and that was exactly what he did.  He loved that boy, and was determined that he would have someone who accepted him, unconditionally.  Well, Sergey and his wife, and their human son, Nikolai.  When they finally left Gault for Earth, to resettle in Minsk, the place his son would come to call home, a city looming with history, an outlet, an escape for a boy needing an escape, Sergey again thought of his experiences aboard the T'kuvma, and wondered what he'd missed.  Life with the boy was a constant challenge, of course, but nothing had ever been more rewarding, nothing that spoke so intimately of purpose. 

Years later still, he confessed himself amused, listening to his son speak in his trademark brief utterances, of prune juice as "the warrior's drink."  Sergey had tried for a long time to get his son to drink the stuff, when he was a boy, and of course the youth had wanted nothing to do with it.  It's always the discoveries we make ourselves that...Well, Sergey was an old man now, and felt like it, but hearing that joy in his son's voice, it made him feel young again. 

And proud.