Title: Sealaionn 1: Stolen from Heaven
Author: TrekPhile47
Summary: The first in a four-part series. B'Elanna is kidnapped from Voyager and tortured. But for what reason?
B'Elanna and Tom have a fight, each is too stubborn to go to the other for forgiveness; B'Elanna and Seven are kidnapped from Voyager. As Tom introspects his petty actions, B'Elanna pays severely for being a crewman aboard Voyager.
Rating: R, for the "F" word and angst. (I'm sorry, I like both.)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Voyager, and I can't afford them. I am disgruntled, I am an author; that explains and justifies my actions. Tamrak is mine, though after getting into his head, I don't think I want to play with him anymore.
Spoilers: If you haven't at least seen "Day of Honor" or any ep after it, I think it's safe to tell you to run away. If you haven't seen "Caretaker," and don't want to be surprised; that's just sad.
Keywords: B'Elanna, "Voyager,"
Classification: Angst
Archive: Please e-mail me first and ask for my permission (chances are I'll give it to you; you don't need to worry about me shooting you down). TrekPhile47@hotmail.com
Notes: All poetry is by e. e. cummings (one of my favorites) unless otherwise marked.
***
Hell (by most humble me which shall increase)
open thy fire! for i have had some bliss
of one small lady upon the earth above;
to whom i cry, remembering her face,
i have never loved you dear as now i love
Tom was a dead man. He knew it; there was no way to escape the forthcoming wrath. He could dodge plasma and ion storms with the greatest of ease; he could smooth talk his way out of any jam.
But there was no way to escape the wrath of a snubbed Klingon.
He sighed from his edge of the chair and held his ground, "How many times do we go through this: I didn't forget on purpose!"
"How many times are you going to forget, Tom," B'Elanna shot back. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was sunk back into the pillows. Normally, her looking so angry would have been sexy if she actually wasn't angry. Tom could see the veins in her neck straining, waiting for the cue to blow.
Tom gaped back at her, "God; you make it like I forget everything."
"You do!"
Touché. Tom gritted his teeth and spoke through them, "I'm really, really, really sorry that I forgot about our date, B'Elanna...truly."
B'Elanna gave him a look that could melt a bulkhead. Tom bit his lip and returned to his own defensive position.
They sat in their silence for a long time, each belligerently unbreakable. Tom wasn't too worried about it, usually after a fight, B'Elanna usually caved in and started talking to him again. It was the way they worked together, pretty much matter/antimatter: as advantageous as hell, but damn, what an explosion. This fight was the same as the rest.
"Tom, maybe you should leave..."
Or not. "I..."
"No, Tom, I really don't want to hear your sob story. I hate to say it, but I am really sick of it. I do sympathize with you working as field medic and pilot, but I also have things to deal with. I don't like having to get off my haggard shift of listening to engineers giving me their bullshit and then have to listen to my boyfriend bullshit apologies for what's inevitably going to happen again," B'Elanna snapped. As long as Tom had backed her into the corner, she might as well fight her way out of it.
Tom looked as if she had walked all over his manhood, he was utterly stunned at her outburst, but not surprised. "You know what? You're right B'Elanna: I'll see you."
If the doors slammed, then it would have rattled itself off its hinges. But, there were no hinges and the doors don't slam. B'Elanna sat confused and quiet, What the hell just happened?
While B'Elanna was trying to figure out the answer, Tom waited outside the door, waiting for her to run to get him. In five minutes, B'Elanna still hadn't made her grand appearance. "Fine," he muttered in false finality, turning on his heel, he walked down the hall with purpose.
B'Elanna just needed time to cool off, and then she'd forgive him. She couldn't last long with being severely mad at him.
***
B'Elanna gritted her teeth so hard they practically turned to dust in her mouth. She yanked hard on the panel, which only accomplished ripping off one of her already-short fingernails. "Dammit!" she hollered, letting her shout reverberate in the Jefferies tube.
She was in a mood most foul this morning and it all started a week ago when she and Paris had gotten into that fight. It was a small ship and their relationship wasn't exactly hush-hush anymore: word traveled faster than an ship borne on hell's wings. Whispers were suspended as she walked by herself to her shift and restarted as she turned the corner. She received sympathetic (and wholly pathetic) looks from comrades, which meant little or nothing to her. Things just got worse from there: including the power relay grids blowing their fuses for the umpteenth time this month.
B'Elanna growled in anger as the fight played itself over again like some deranged holomovie. Tom probably figured she was going to come around and forgive him, but she wouldn't stoop down to allowing him to know what she wanted, she couldn't allow him to know her so well. And of course, Tom being Tom, he was equally stubborn; he hadn't come within twenty feet of her to ask for her forgiveness. Silence breeds silence...and then more silence, so they hadn't talked in a week.
Which suited B'Elanna fine. ...Liar, the voice inside her taunted.
Stupid jerk, lousy bastard.
Somehow, cursing Paris made her feel a little bit better. It took away the sting of how badly she knew she had hurt him.
Her bleeding finger finally screamed at her, demanding her attention. She popped the tip of it into her mouth, letting the coppersalty blood stain her tongue. She allowed herself the brief moment of comfort, sitting there like a child, with her knees cuddled to her chest, hoping the pain would bounce off her (as it liked to seep through every orifice that she had). She pursed her lips and beat her right fist on the console, "Work you piece of crap!"
It laughed at her, which made her furious.
She leaned up against the wall of the Jefferies tube and sighed. She was tired of running around and fixing things: she hated being the only one to know the answers, and she didn't want to answer everyone's questions. Having so much authority was fun at first, then it became real work. She just wished everyone would leave her alone.
The tears hot on her cheeks surprised her.
Great, this was all she needed; to go back to Engineering red-eyed and runny-nosed. She rubbed fiercely at her eyes, scratching at the already raw skin, trying to get the tears to stop flowing. She cursed again as she ran the raw flesh of her finger into the jagged fingernail edge.
She sighed angrily with equal amount of tears. Why wouldn't time stop because she was upset and hurt?
She finally gave into the inevitable and cried softly. This was all Tom Paris's fault. If he hadn't forgotten.... And if he hadn't been so.... And if he...if he....
It was no use, there wasn't any way she could place the blame on Tom. And that made it all worse: this mess was mostly her fault. ...Her damned Klingon fault.
She couldn't have been sure how long she sat in her comfort world, but she figured that she should have gotten back to work: she came here in the first place to work, not for solace. She opened her engineering kit like it was a box of treasure and lifted out a panel extractor. (She probably should have thought of the crowbar before ripping her fingernail off, but she blamed it on the Klingon genes.)
She pried the panel off and set working. With the tricorder and circuit spanner, she worked arduously on fixing the relay networks and off her black mood. ...Keeping her thoughts of her own problems was her forte.
"Do you require assistance, " a resonant female voice asked.
"Ah," B'Elanna cried out and placed a hand to her hammering heart. "Sweet Lord, Seven; you scared me."
"That was not my intent," Seven pointed out as she pulled herself into the Jefferies tube next to B'Elanna. They were too large to both fit in the same five feet of space, but that didn't seem to bother Seven. She leaned over nosily and observed B'Elanna's work.
"I'm sure if you meant it, you would have waved your assimilation tubules at me," B'Elanna growled.
Silent moments passed as Seven looked at her with perplexed eyes. ...Well, one eye.
B'Elanna sighed, it was like Seven to understand physical force and yet not understand sarcasm or rhetoric. "Nevermind."
Seven looked even more perplexed, but continued on, "I was going to offer you my assistance."
"I'm fine, Seven," B'Elanna assured, Now get the hell away from me!
"It seems as though the warp-command relays are off line again. ...Are you attempting to fix it?"
"Yes, Seven, I was trying to fix them when you came here and interrupted me," B'Elanna snapped.
An emotion flickered across the Borg's (former Borg, she reminded herself for the billionth time) face. It was something like anger, then hurt, and the urge to slap B'Elanna across her pouting face. Her eyes blinked calmly as she reigned in her own emotions; "I was only attempting to help you, Lieutenant."
B'Elanna gave in with a sigh of defeat; "I'm sorry, Seven: I've been having a bad day."
"Understood," Seven said, the excuse substituted for an apology.
There was something about Seven of Nine at that moment that B'Elanna appreciated: Seven didn't care what muck B'Elanna was swimming through in her brain, she just wanted to get the job done. (Not like Tom, who always wanted to hear how she was thinking. She didn't like throwing her emotions into the air so that all the spectators to her one-ring circus watched as she precariously juggled them all.) B'Elanna couldn't help but feel grateful.
"You replaced Alpha-Pi 801 in the wrong place," Seven pointed out, killing the glow. Her aluminum-clad fingers reached past B'Elanna's poised talons and slipped the chip out of its casing and into another one.
"Uh...thanks, Seven," B'Elanna said. Her hand dropped to her side a defeated soldier.
"Excuse me, Lieutenant; but you seem agitated," Seven noted, digging her own space grave. B'Elanna bared her teeth in hostility and nearly reached out with her hands to strangle Seven.Instead, she pressed the flesh into the nail, making her focus on the pain instead; "I am, Seven. And I prefer not to talk about it."
"I was just told by the Doctor if there is empathy present in other crewmates I should inquire---"
"Argh! Seven: I don't care what the Doctor told you! I'm fine, you're fine, we're all fine! Can we please drop it?"
Seven's face betrayed no anger this time, only a little hurt that was then covered with indifference. Her shoulders slumped a little bit, showing B'Elanna subtly that she was trying hard to act human. B'Elanna knew she wasn't helping by shooting down her attempts.
"Damn," B'Elanna cursed. "I just..."
Seven blinked her eyes slowly; silencing B'Elanna's flubbed attempts at amends.
The air shimmered beside them as an alien materialized in the Jefferies tube and B'Elanna cried out, nearly falling over herself.
"Lieutenant, get down!" Seven dove towards her to protect her from an energy weapon aimed directly at them both. "Seven of Nine to Tuvok: Intrude---" she groaned as the weapon discharged and hit her in the stomach.
B'Elanna's own attempts to drag Seven out of the Jefferies tubes were cut off as she was also hit in the stomach. It felt like someone had set fire to her insides and she groaned as her entire world fuzzed out and blackened. Her body slumped over Seven; her hand brushing up against Seven's...their last apology.
"Beam me out," the alien said, placing his hand on B'Elanna's back. The three of them glimmered like celebration confetti and then were gone.
***
put off your faces,Death:for day is over
(and such a day as must remember he
who watched unhands describe what mimicry
...
opens a gate;the prisoner dawn embraces.
"As of 1347 this afternoon, Beta Shift, Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine are reported missing...or AWOL," Captain Janeway said slowly to the senior staff.
"Gone?" Tom asked. "They can't just be gone. There aren't many places to go."
Janeway shrugged gently, "They are gone. I know that's hard, but we have to face it. We are doing everything in our power to find them. Until then, that's what is written in the official log."
"Captain if I may interrupt, I have discovered something: there was an interrupted transmission to the bridge at the time Lieutenant Torres and Seven of Nine went missing," Tuvok reported. "The message was not completed, thus not coming to the bridge. Also, there are traces of energy weapon's fire in Jefferies tube 45, section 2."
"Abducted?"
"It appears so," Tuvok affirmed, "although there is no signs of a beaming in or out from the ship."
Figures: when you need evidence, there is none. "I want people on this: there is no way we are letting our crew get kidnapped without a fight. Tuvok, assemble a group of the security and get on it now. I want hourly reports. ...Meeting dismissed."
Great, another missing person/body to add to the account list in Voyager's logbook. What made this on the body count? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Janeway couldn't count them anymore; she didn't want to count them anymore.
This time, it was slowly creeping up the ladder. Her Head Engineer and Seven (the Fix-It-All-But-Breaks-Most-First-After-Disturbing-The-Natural-Order-Of-Things officer). Things were starting to take a nasty turn for the worse, which was the next going to be? Could it even be her?
She was jumping ahead of herself again; there was no confirmation that B'Elanna and Seven were dead, only missing.
They could be dead, the evil voice within her hissed. They are dead and you did it again, Kathryn Janeway: you are signing your crew's death warrant.
She blinked hard and shut the voice out of her head: everything she did was for her crew. She'd give her own life for her crew.
You're a failure, Janeway. Throw in the towel, you've lost.
I have not, she screamed back. She sighed angrily and circled the table. She was surprised when she saw a lone figure staring at her. He was as grim as the devil, and about twice as sinister looking. All Janeway could make out in her fog-clogged brain was his piercing blue eyes. The eyes betrayed hurt and painfully irredeemable hope.
Tom hadn't moved from his spot. He sat now like some invisible blow had struck him.
"Tom?"
"I hadn't spoken to her in a week," he said with hurt in his throat. "We got into a fight: a petty lover's quarrel."
Janeway understood. She sat down in the chair previously occupied by Harry Kim and swiveled in it. "This isn't your fault. You shouldn't believe in superstition."
"It wouldn't hurt as bad if I had spoken to her this morning, told her that I loved her, giver her a hug...asked her to forgive me," he replied. It was as if she was dead, and the truth of that fiction could have easily been fact. It was already beginning to ache deep within him. "I haven't been able to say goodbye, and my last memory is walking out on her."I'm sorry, Tom," Janeway put a hand on his shoulder. "I wish I could say something to help you."
"I wish I could say something to help me."
"It hurts so much to have this happen, it hurts as a Captain, and it hurts because you love her. I want to remember her as she was, changing and growing. She was learning to live with herself, which was a feat of feats, Tom. You should let that be your strongest memory if it's your last," Janeway advised.
"...They can't be dead---B'Elanna can't be dead," he insisted. "I don't understand it: B'Elanna was murdered and yet I am here, and I can't say or do anything. It's not fair."
"Things happen to people, good and bad alike, and it hurts worse when they are good people. I don't know if you believe in fate, but whatever happened did happen and right now, we can't change it. I can't guarantee that they aren't dead, and yet, I can't guarantee that they are, Tom," Janeway murmured. "We have to accept it...then we have to move on."
"I can't move on with this so heavy inside me," Tom replied, his eyes lined with tears. He wiped them away, ashamed of himself; the motion killed something inside Janeway. "I feel like I'm being dragged to the bottom of an ocean."
Janeway shook her head, unable to reply as she was battling her own tears. If only you could understand how I feel like I failed, Tom. Captain-hood is not all wine and roses.
The stricken look on Tom's face nearly shattered her shell. "Please Captain, help me."
The request pulled Kathryn to the bottom of the ocean with Tom. It was like a call from behind a cage, and it sounded just as painful. "I will, I'm doing everything I can to find out what happened to B'Elanna and Seven. There are limits to what I can do and to what we can find. If I can't find anything to rule that they are alive, then they are dead. Life goes on through good and bad, so must we."
Tom choked on his tears, "I...I understand."
"Don't say goodbye yet, Tom. If you lose your hope, then B'Elanna does die and the murderers go free. If you forget, we forget. I swear I will not rest until I find something...anything."
***
sniffing a Paper rose
smiling to a self...
...(a moon swims out of a cloud
a clock strikes midnight
a finger pulls a trigger
a bird flies into a mirror)
The room was a meat locker, and the person lying on the table was uncovered...unprotected. It was cold enough that the faint breath from her slacked jaw was steam. Her skin rose in gooseflesh, but there was no way to warm herself, her wrists were restrained, as were her ankles. It wouldn't have mattered if she could; she was unconscious.
She lay alone in this room, dreaming---or perhaps in a nightmare. Her body twitched and constricted in pain as if fighting an invisible dream assailant. Her flesh crawled with a life its own, trying to be free, trying to escape the inner hell.
Her nearly silent moans were pitiful and mewling as if she were a wounded animal: and yet, she was. She was alone in an alien world and hurt, no amount of sleep or calm can deny that fact. She cried as she realized she is not dreaming, but trapped in a nightmare.
B'Elanna's eyes shot open as she screamed someone's name. Her voice caught in her bruised throat and stuck there, thick and choking.
Frantically, she moved her arms, and then her legs. She felt like a pinned butterfly that was still alive: beating its wings furiously against the Styrofoam but nowhere to fly except into Plexiglas. She could smell the formaldehyde thick as if it were solid. Being so vulnerable frightened her and she went into hyperventilation. It took great willpower and time for her to regain control.
She thrust her chest up and head towards one another, trying to hit the commbadge against her chin to activate it. She missed, and the whiplash stung her neck, but tried again for her freedom. "Torres to Voyager."
Nothing. She tried again, her voice barely above a whisper. Still nothing.
Figured: when in dire straits, the first thing to go was the commbadge. Someone should have reported the design flaw a long time ago. Or maybe it was just Voyagers who were cursed with the mechanical misfortune.
Her teeth began to chatter as the sweat from her nightmare evaporated. She could feel the blackness pressing against her body, threatening to swallow her. Shivering provided some warmth, but not much.
She realized past the adrenaline of fear that her stomach hurt. It felt like she was being gouged out with a blunt-edged ice cream scoop. Occasionally, the muscles in her abdomen winced involuntarily, causing momentary ease, but then slipping back into sharp ache.
She tried to figure out where she was, but she couldn't remember all that much that had happened within the last 24 hours, her mind was hazy and blurred like bad leola root stew. She struggled with her brain, forcing it to focus, but it refused; memories were graying around the edges and it felt like she was full of matter-antimatter explosions.
The pain was getting worse; her stomach felt like it was being chewed on along with being gouged out.
In sudden rage and fear, B'Elanna undulated her body against the restraints, trying to free herself using brute Klingon force. She slammed her head down onto the table with sharp impacts, making stars appear in the edges of her vision. She ripped her hands up to her head, which only succeeded in making the skin tear and bleed, and her knees popped in contempt as she tried kicking her way out of the restraints. She cried out in rage and pulled harder on everything, determined to free herself, but nothing gave.
Animals who are caught in traps will chew off their own appendage to get free. B'Elanna hoped it wouldn't come to that, something would have to give; wither her bones or the restraints.
Her blood felt like it was laced with alcohol, her whole body hurt, each thudding of her heart sent whole new waves of pain through her body.
Despite her resolve, she began to whine pitifully, exactly like a confused trapped animal: "Please...help me, someone."
She remembered between her cries that she had been kidnapped. She remembered the alien in the Jefferies tube and then the pain in her guts as she was shot. The sawdust in her brain refused to let her focus onto anything concrete.
Music began to play.
It was so soft that B'Elanna wouldn't have noticed it unless she was in craning to listen for rescuers. It slowly grew until she didn't have to strain to hear it.
It was a hymn from Earth. She recognized the opening chords as "I Danced in the Morning." How many times had she listened to Harry practice the song on his damned oboe?
...Clarinet, she reminded herself. Harry played the clarinet.
"Dance, dance, wherever you may be: I am the Lord of the Dance," said He. "I shall lead you all wherever you may be, for I am the Lord of the Dance," said He.
Her mind, which had once been crisp as she listened to the music, was beginning to fuzz over again.
The lights perked on: it was as if the ceiling had opened up to the sky. B'Elanna wasn't religious, even in Klingon, but she muttered a half-prayer for deliverance.
The ceiling mirrored ambient light at the beginnings of a dawn. No, it wasn't a dawn, it was a sunset: the ceiling streaked with orange, pink, purple and indigo. B'Elanna gasped at its beauty, ceasing in her struggles for the moment to stare at it.
Dusk gave way to night, the sky navy blue, and dotted with flickering stars. By some marvel of alien science, this nighttime sky was enough to illuminate the room. B'Elanna stopped staring at the sky and craned her head back and forth; searching for the person that had lit the room. Her hands opened and closed, still searching to free themselves despite the fact that her body was calm.
"Easy, little butterfly," a voice said. "You'll hurt yourself."
"Where are you," B'Elanna cried out in anger and frustration. "Show yourself!"
"I plan on it," the voice said. "I have been watching you for some time. Poor little thing, you strain so hard, but accomplish nothing."
B'Elanna let an angry cry come from her throat, the walls echoed the grievous noise and back into her brain where it shattered the glass.
"Shh, your cries are in vain, save your voice to talk. If you ask nicely, I may be able to answer your questions."
"Who are you? Where are you?"
"My name, butterfly, is Tamrak. And I am here in this room with you."
B'Elanna caught something in the corner of her eye and whipped her head to see it. She saw the figure she had heard silhouetted against the walls. He stepped forward.
Tamrak was a tall man dressed in a doctor's uniform. A civilian doctor's uniform. Scrubs to be exact. B'Elanna didn't know where she had seen the clothes before. Never on anyone in Starfleet, maybe from the ancient past. She cursed and willed her brain back into focus.
His hair was clipped close to his head, but fell forward as he leaned over the table to examine B'Elanna's wrists, his hands gently touched the raw flesh and then he clucked his tongue and scribbled on a clipboard. His skin was pallid, but sparkled almost; his lips were dark purple and frowned on her as he looked her over. His green eyes read over all of his notes.
"Turn the music off," B'Elanna growled; it was soothing her when she needed to be ferocious.
"You don't like it," Tamrak pouted. "I do so love good music when I am working."
"You sick bastard," B'Elanna cursed.
"On the contrary, B'Elanna; you're the sick one," Tamrak surprised her with the knowledge of her name. "Ah, I knew you'd be surprised! How grand, I have been able to elicit something other than anger in you."
"How?"
"All in the lobes, my dear," Tamrak said, tapping his head. "It's amazing what the brain will project when the body is hurt. Almost like the little black box of the body. It transmits just about everything in the cerebral cortex, hoping that somehow, something will understand it and keep the memory alive." He giggled through his nose at his own knowledge. B'Elanna wanted to gag.
"Oh don't look so...disgusted," Tamrak pouted again. "Holier-than-thou doesn't behoove you, especially seeing as you're the one ready for dissection, not me."
B'Elanna heaved herself against the restraints, a new excuse the try to free herself. She groaned as the pain in her stomach grew and heaved her whole body harder into her freedom fight.
"It won't do you any good, Miss Torres. These restraints can take up to 400 metric kilograms of pressure per square centimeter. The only things that you'll break is you arms."
"So be it," she muttered as she ignored his warning. Her wrists opened and began to bleed again.
"You don't want to have me sedate you," Tamrak warned. "The withdrawal is quite painful, or so I have observed. ...No one really lives through it."
B'Elanna slacked at the warning of more pain and had already been defeated in her first battle.
"Good girl, I knew you'd understand primitive emotion."
"The most primitive emotion in all species is fear, blockhead," B'Elanna spat.
"Come now, we mustn't get nasty. I understand that fear is a primitive, emotion, Miss Torres; but please, your reading ahead in the script and I loose my place when people do that."
B'Elanna turned her head away, "How long have I been here?"
"Oh, about thirty-six hours," Tamrak replied smoothly.
"Where's Seven of Nine?"
"The Borg? ...She's 'indisposed' at the moment."
"What are you doing to her," B'Elanna urged.
"We aren't doing anything," Tamrak replied. "In fact, no one is doing anything to her at the present moment."
B'Elanna closed her eyes against the emotions that newly washed on her shores, "What are you going to do to her?"
He ignored her, a sign of him being in control; "Now please, B'Elanna, be a dear and open your eyes: I like to be looked at when talking to people."
B'Elanna opened her eyes, and glared at him through her molten pain, "Make it stop."
"The pain? I would, B'Elanna, honestly," Tamrak replied, "but if you weren't in pain, you may get the idea to stay silent, and I wouldn't appreciate that. No, you must stay in pain."
"I am Klingon," B'Elanna said, "pain doesn't affect me the way you'd hope."
"Ah, little butterfly," he replied, "but you are half human, are you not? And that, B'Elanna, is the fissure in your titanium: enough pressure will break it."
It was sickening the way he put it; he was so blatant, so factual. He clearly was enjoying playing the mind games issued on B'Elanna. The stars above her flickered in reprieve, asking her to be calm.
"Do you like them? The stars, I mean," Tamrak asked above her. "Its pretty much a fiber-optic display recorded from real life. If I do recall, it's from Earth."
"You couldn't have created it when I was unconscious," B'Elanna pointed out, "you've only had my thoughts and memories for 36 hours."
"True, but it wasn't created for you," Tamrak replied. "It was created long ago when I had another human in my lab. ...Paul Wright."
"How...?"
"Perhaps I should tell you in a story; it will take your mind off the pain," Tamrak offered. "Long ago, there were a group of us who lived as scientists in the Gamma Quadrant, very far from what little has been discovered and traveled. We took different races and studied them for durations of time. We could hear their thoughts, and we could feel their pain. For us, mind reading is very much an aphrodisiac.
"We extended out in the direction of Deep Space Nine, but didn't venture within scanning range. That would have been too dangerous for us. Whenever we felt someone of interest, we would take them. That's how we received Paul. ...Ouch, B'Elanna, that was a nasty thought," Tamrak replied, looking down at her.
"You kidnapped them; like you kidnapped me!" she voiced aloud for auditory confirmation.
"Shush, do you want to hear this or not?" He continued without waiting, "Anyway, we learned of the Dominion conflict and it troubled us so. We went in search of the Cardassians, and passed through the Array and here into the Delta Quadrant. Caretaker and his assistant helped us in little ways. We started out work here."
"You work for yourselves?"
"No," Tamrak frowned, "we don't. We now work for Caretaker's assistant."
"She's alive!" B'Elanna yelped.
"Yes, she is, and we work for her in hopes that she will send us back to the Gamma Quadrant."
B'Elanna snorted, "She's holding you here like you're holding me!" She pealed in short laughter to rub it into Tamrak, despite the fact that it was hurting her ragged throat.
"Quiet!" Tamrak thundered, the insult egging him on. "Caretaker's Assistant has had her eye on Voyager for a long time. We decided to take one of you and see if you were worth her time."
"What the hell does that mean," B'Elanna asked.
"We have to pick your brain, B'Elanna. We have to find out why Caretaker's assistant wants you so badly, she's had her eyes on you for a very, very long time."
B'Elanna wriggled in her straps, trying to relieve the aching in her cramping muscles, "Please Tamrak, just give me something to uncramp my muscles."
Tamrak shrugged, "I can't."
"Bastard," she hissed. "Let me go!"
"B'Elanna, do you want me to sing it for you, would you like a song and dance?" The way Tamrak said it made him sound a lot like Tom. B'Elanna shuddered at the sad memory.
"Ah, there we are, " Tamrak said. "We're already making progress and we haven't even started. Let me see, shall we do this the easy way or go about it the fun way?"
B'Elanna shuddered again, shutting her mind down.
"Oh, B'Elanna, you don't look like your having much fun," he pointed out. "Maybe I'll do this easier, you don't want to be pushed so rigorously the first day."
B'Elanna could feel what was like tiny little baby hands pulling at yarn inside her head. B'Elanna tried to grab the hands and pull them away, but they were crafty and dodged her. "If you continue, I swear to God, I'll scream so loud the Alpha Quadrant will hear it."
"B'Elanna, I'm loosing my patience," Tamrak warned. B'Elanna took his word for it and let him pull the stuffing out of her head. She could see what he was doing in his head, it was terrible, and it was degrading.
"...Tom...Paris. Penal colony...accident...renegade," Tamrak revealed things verbally as he saw them in her head; even though she herself could see them as if they were happening again. "Seems like a regular bad kid. ...Lied about...three deaths...Charlie...Bruno...Odile.... My, my, B'Elanna, you sure can pick them, can't you?"
"Go to hell," B'Elanna screamed at him and strained at the restraints. If she got her hands on him she'd kill him, she'd take his neck in her hands and squeeze.
"That's not very nice," Tamrak pointed out in his annoying simple way. He continued the mental rape; "...Oh, what's this? A fight? How terrible. I guess I can understand your repressing those memories. And think, I never even let you say goodbye."
B'Elanna let out another howl and strained against him.
"Let me ask you something B'Elanna: How does it feel to know that you make love to a man who's a murderer?"
"Fuck you," B'Elanna replied mixed in with an anguished scream of complete pain. Everything that she had left went into it, and when she couldn't breathe anymore, the tears fell down her face, burning through her skin.
Tamrak only smiled placidly and with great humor at her pain.
"Perhaps that is enough for today," Tamrak noted mercifully. "We shall see what you have to say when I come back. I'll let you think about whether or not you want to continue."
"Like I have a choice?" she hissed.
"Well, no, not really. But I'm going to let you think."
"You already know the answer," B'Elanna said.
"True, B'Elanna, but I'm going to let you think about it. Thought is a powerful weapon: it can make and break. In your case, Miss Torres, chances are it will break you, and it makes my job much easier," Tamrak said with quiet subhuman tones. "You have 24 hours. We shall see how long you last with your own thoughts while you are in pain and starving."
"I'll never let you have my thoughts, you bastard. Never!" B'Elanna screamed as the door shut behind him.
***
B'Elanna lay alone on the exam table for four hours in complete silence after Tamrak had left her, not hearing anything but the laboring of her breathing. The night sky had shut itself off and left her in complete darkness.
At first, it wasn't too bad; she had managed to sleep between the waves of pain, then she gritted her teeth and rode them out when it became nearly unbearable. She managed to occupy her mind with thoughts of battle, which gave her body a better explanation to the pain and a reason to heal itself.
It was towards the rounding of the sixth hour by herself that she started to feel anything of what Tamrak had done to her; the mental rape had induced her mind to run around and grab the marbles that had fallen out of the bag. The pain in her brain was maddening, it was like her cerebral cortex was expanding and trying to break its way out of her skull.
The memories ripped through her brain with sharp clarity; she relived every moment for the next four hours in record time. The ones she had finally managed to deal with were the ones that aggravated her pain the most. She was sure that anyone looking at her could tell about the pain she was going through, her throat betrayed nothing, but her face told all.
Then she realized the hunger in her stomach.
She couldn't remember her last meal; it was as if the 24-hour period before Tamrak got ahold of her brain was like murky seawater. She bit her lip and tried not to think about it.
No such luck. It but at her stomach, tickling and purring and begging her to put something in her body. B'Elanna could do nothing. She couldn't feed herself, she was still restrained and even if she could, she couldn't find anything to do it with.
"B'Elanna," someone called.
"Tamrak," the fear was frost in her throat.
"Come back, B'Elanna."
"Tom?"
"I need you."
"Tom!" she almost saw him, what she could distinguish (and it wasn't even with her eyes, it was in her brain) was his piercing blue eyes. But as soon as she recognized it, it had died away into the heavy blackness.
She was starting to hallucinate. She hadn't hallucinated in years, and even then, she hadn't known that they were hallucinations. They weren't pleasant then, either....
She had to get water; she had to get food. She couldn't do anything but think of that and every time she thought about it, it made her insane.
No water, the only thing that she had was blood. She had her own blood coursing through her veins for her use. Of course, the idea was not pleasant, and perhaps though was good at first; use the water in her blood to satiate herself. Then, of course, the water she lost from bleeding herself would be barely replaced by the blood that she did drink. Obviously, that plan wouldn't work.
She bit down fiercely on her lips, making the blood flow thick and hot. It coated her mouth and dripped down the back of her throat. The pain was nothing compared to in her stomach, and her throat didn't feel as dry or as cracked.
Stupid move, B'Elanna, she chided herself angrily. She would certainly want more blood to make her not feel thirsty, and there was no way that she could supply enough blood to keep herself from dehydrating without dehydrating from blood loss. Catch-22.
She had no idea how long she had to go until Tamrak returned. It was probably still hours before she would get food or water. Klingons (even half-Klingons), like Terrans, could only survive so long without water. Maybe she should have listened to how her mother described the ways a warrior prepared for battle; there may have been something in there about slowing metabolism....
Oh well, that was then, this was now. She was going to starve to death; it was as simple as that.
Her mind flooded with particularly morose memories of her own bidding; she couldn't stop them from coming and she couldn't stop them from flooding past her. She remembered her mother, and all the fights; she remembered her father, and all the tears; she remembered Starfleet, and all the anger; she remembered Tom, and all the love.
The last memories were the ones she played over and over again as a masochistic play that paraded around in her brain.
She took sighing breaths that ended up turning into tears. She couldn't wipe them away, and she knew that pain would only make them worse. She mashed her lips together, and swallowed hard, but that wouldn't stop them.
B'Elanna realized how lonely she was. She hadn't seen a living soul in over twelve hours, and she hadn't even then seen anyone familiar. She estimated that she'd been gone from Voyager for about two days. It felt like it had been forever.
She whimpered in spite of herself, then she bit fiercely down on her lip to stop the animal noises. She fell asleep a few hours later with the blood dripping from her lips, and congealing in the back of her throat.
***
Tamrak came back into the exam room in the 24-hours time that he had promised to her. On a small tray, he had set up a small vial of milky white liquid and a hypodermic needle. B'Elanna tried to squirm, but she was in too much hunger pain to impress anyone with bravado.
"Ah, so I see my little endeavor has proved useful," he said as he pulled a seat next to her table and drifted into it. He filled the syringe full of the cloudy liquid and flicked his fingers against it, removing the air bubbles with a skill that came clearly with practice.
"Don't touch me," she hissed through her gritted teeth.
"And not feed you? I don't think I could live with myself if you starved to death."
"Don't patronize me," she sizzled as hot as a live wire.
Tamrak wet a small cloth with alcohol and rubbed it against her skin; the coolness of the drying alcohol made her whole body shudder. B'Elanna fought him a little bit to let him know that she still had some fight in her. "That will soon change," he promised as he read her thoughts.
"Don't do this to me." The words were simple and dispassionate: a simple request. If she had seen herself, she wouldn't have even known it was she.
"If only it were that simple, B'Elanna," Tamrak said with the needle poised at her arm, "but Caretaker's Assistant wants something with you and Voyager and I have made it my business to find out."
"Why," she pressed, "what's in it for you?"
She gritted her teeth as the felt the hot needle burn through her flesh and the liquid coursing through her veins, worming itself through her heart and too all of her muscles. The pain wasn't excruciating, it was just annoying and Tamrak was a silent as a corpse as the nutrients untied all her knots. "I'm, letting you rape my thoughts; the least that you can do for me is to answer my question."
"On the contrary, B'Elanna...it's not by your will that I receive your thoughts. But, for your own sake, I will answer you."
"And," she queried.
"Caretaker's Assistant is horribly dictatorial. If things between her and my people continue to go as they do, we'll have no way to get home."
"That's right; she's holding you here," B'Elanna looked at him snidely, her eyes seething plasma. "Why don't you live for yourself and trying thinking of ways to get yourself home?"
"We can't just do as you do; don't you realize that you probably won't live long enough to get home," Tamrak noted in a tone that sent shivers down her spine. "We cannot be like Voyager."
"Poor you," she sighed sarcastically.
"On the contrary," he perked back up, "a good deed that pleases Caretaker's Assistant means that she will share her technology of the Array with us."
"Doesn't that make you feel the slightest bit cheap that you have to buy the Caretaker's Assistant's good graces?" The bitterness of her words bit the insides of her mouth.
"Anything to get home."
B'Elanna pulled her gaping mouth shut and stared at the ceiling, which emitted ambient light. Wasn't "anything to get home" Captain Janeway's motto? If not said, then wasn't it proven by example? Somehow, the two different people displaying the mantra put a whole new spin onto the way she saw it. She didn't like what she saw.
"Dear B'Elanna, I do believe you are looking a little green," Tamrak noted as he turned her head to face him. His fingers as soft as a child's emitted flickers if emotion in her that she though had died with the birth of her pain. She would have spat on him, but her mouth suddenly felt like it was filled with lint. "A side affect of the vitamins I gave you. Makes you right thirsty."
B'Elanna wished he hadn't said that, because all she could think about was a glass of water. She knew that he wasn't going to give it to her either.
"B'Elanna, dear, I'm sorry that this has to be so painful for you," Tamrak said in a slowed voice that suspended time, "but know that you are saving my race."
Even though her mouth was dry and her throat had nearly fallen in, B'Elanna still had enough Klingon rage in her to scream.
End 1/5
