Isabella catches up with Lalita on the language, and by the time they've been living among Davlians for a year they're both fluent. Lalita has an easier time making himself useful to their hosts than Isabella does, what with his vast arsenal of variously practical skills, but Isabella manages to make a few PADDs from the ship take Davlian electricity and pokes around on the nets, contributing useful ideas in appropriately modest pseudonymous fashion. (Not under "polarbear". That wouldn't make her inconspicuous, here. She goes by the less than concealing "priv_sky"; if anyone, under all the careful not-prying, is curious about her identity, they may have it, but she's trying to be polite.) Occasionally she gets a Davlia-approved thrill of warmth when something she's suggested anonymously is put into practice and nobody knows it's hers except Lalita.
The ship doesn't have very good bandwidth for subspace access to the Federation nets - it's warp-capable, but it was mostly not intended for long-distance runs, it didn't need to send large packets of information through subspace when it was generally within fine range for radio. Also, the Federation knows where they are, or at least has a very strong hunch - it just can't scoop them up without annoying the Davlians, who they're still trying to court. They can restrict information flow to the Potomac systems (because wherever they think it is, they know it was stolen) and to Davlia's own nets. News of home is not nonexistent, but it is infrequent and probably filtered.
They've been on Davlia for almost six years when Isabella learns that their neighbors have been unobtrusively considering her and Lalita what amounts to common-law married since they landed. She tells him so.
Isabella laughs. "I suppose I can see why they'd assume it!" And then she taps her foot; she's been going barefoot since her only pair of shoes wore out, since the commodity is scarce on a planetful of hoofed people. "Do you want to get married? Engaged, I mean, to start?"
It is two months after this conversation when Viv - who is grown up, now, most of the way, and considers herself a special friend of the sky people - visits with some news from the Federation of Unfriendliness.
It has gotten - unfriendlier.
In spite of Isabella's private trial, word has gotten around about what she was doing; she inspired a handful of less-competent copycats, all quickly rounded up, and they inspired still more, two of whom are still at large. Some less directly practical support for her philosophies is also underway.
In response, the Federation - as married to the Prime Directive as any government ever was to an ideal - has tightened the restrictions. They will not interact with just any old culture that has produced a warp signature. Any world that shows signs of "contamination" from an advanced people will not be recognized by the Federation for a five-decade probationary period, however much the civilizations may scratch at the door of utopia and claim no-fault-of-their-own. Work of Isabella's sort has been rendered worse than useless.
Isabella is not pleased.
There's more news, a few weeks later.
Isabella's sort of crime has been rendered "unmotivated and harmless".
She was never under suspicion for anything else.
She is offered amnesty, and also, they want her to appear on New Vulcan for a repatriation ceremony of some kind, which isn't exactly an apology, but sounds like something that might be produced by someone who feels obliged to offer something in the same neighborhood.
"We could stop - somewhere. I don't want to try paying Ferengi for subspace bandwidth, but someplace where it would be easier to pop back here, or where we couldn't be snapped up if it turned out that's what's waiting. Breen, maybe? I don't know much about the Breen except that they're not Federation and don't tend to shoot on sight."
They fly to New Vulcan; they are not interrupted on the way by any Starfleet vessels cackling "gotcha".
They dock; they shuttle down; their hotel room is comped; off goes Isabella to her repatriation ceremony.
It takes a little longer than expected. She's not back in the morning.
This morning is circled, in her calendar.
One of the voices is Isabella's, and there is a familiar tension in her voice, if you happen to have an augmented memory and can remember that far back.
"- would have been betrothed regardless, if your father had -"
"I said no - I am - I am spoken for - I have a sa-kugalsu -"
"He is not a Vulcan, T'Mir -"
When he gets to the door, he can see Isabella backed into a corner, shaking, face drawn and pale, and she sees him, and she screams at the top of her lungs, "Kal-if-fee!"
"It's my right, I am claiming it," Isabella hisses through gritted teeth, "if my sa-kugalsu will champion me against your - your breeding program."
"This backfired," murmurs one of the elder Vulcans to another, "V'Ler could wind up dead instead of married, I told the High Council -"
"There's nothing for it now, and if he lives it will break the fever, at least," the other mutters. They probably don't intend to be overheard, but no one counts on Lalita's ears.
V'Ler, the young man in the corner, is now visibly sizing up the challenger.
"I'll try not to kill him. He is a member of an endangered species."
He doesn't look like much, all together - tall, lithe, human. But he is entirely too confident for a human who speaks Vulcan this well, who apparently understands exactly what is going on, who is betrothed to a half-Vulcan, and who is about to fulfill a combat challenge for her right to deny her Vulcan suitor.
He shifts his weight, takes a step forward.
"T'Mir, your display is unseemly, even at this time," hisses one of the elders.
"I hate you so much," she hisses back at him through the tears.
Pon farr isn't always contagious, especially interspecies, but it happens, syncs up Vulcan couples - he won't drop into his own cycle without her present, if they should be separated, but she can pull him into hers per occasion, it would seem.
And this time she isn't a desperate, confused virgin and he isn't a near-stranger.
They will be extremely fucking married.
And can't believe she almost - that they -
Now she's thinking about the circumstances immediately prior to this escapade and she's pissed off at the "repatriation" again; the amnesty was real, the ceremony was a ruse, and the timing was all too... convenient.
And then she says, "I might be the only person pardoned for a felony in order to entice me into trapping distance, but I can't be the only person who's been surprised with an engagement."
"Regardless, they saw it as their decision to make. They didn't even suggest it during a calmer moment in case I was open to the idea, they - Renée must have told someone the timing so Niamh would know when it needed a course of tehn-yamareen or when it would need to allow me to invite a conjugal visit, I suppose is how they knew."
"I'm so glad you were there," she says. "So glad you could beat him - that they didn't decide as long as they were screwing me over to deny me the right of challenge."
"I probably can't pull it off," she says after a moment's thought. "The fact that my - incapacitated state - was involved makes the specifics relevant. I'm going to have to explain pon farr, aren't I, it's kept quiet enough that most non-Vulcans haven't heard of it."
"It will be sufficiently embarrassing - and my status as a Vulcan, adulterated or otherwise, is sufficiently relevant to the story - that it might be worthwhile for me to suppress during part or all of the speech. I know Vulcans will take me less seriously if I display emotion, but perhaps they aren't the primary audience I ought to have in mind. Two versions, perhaps?"
"There might be some point, if Vulcans will give me more credit for being able to suppress and if others are moved by sincere displays. It's not a secret that I can do either, but most people don't know me. Perhaps I should just suppress for the portion of the video in which I explain pon farr; that might accomplish all the requisite goals."
"Or it won't, but I may as well hope. Do you suppose there is sufficient attention span in the audience to segue from my accusation to a more general agitation for the dismantling of the Prime Directive? It would be loosely topical, since my amnesty for its violation is why I was here at all."
Isabella fetches a tablet - she switched from trying to maintain PADDs a couple of years ago and is now accustomed to writing on a Davlian device, with programs hacked together to make it tolerate English and Vulcan alphabets - and starts drafting her essay, leaning on Lalita.