Title:

Rating: K

Pairings: Strictly friendship … B'Elanna/Kathryn

Summary: A friendship fic following "Blood Fever." B'Elanna's frustrated and alone, most of her close friends are still just rough acquaintances. A little Holodeck time and some attention from the Captain may help her form the bonds she needs to survive.

Klingon Language Note: For you not so die hards… Tera'ngan means human and petaQ is a particularly oft used insult loosely translated as useless.

"Tera'ngan petaQ!" B'Elanna Torres flung her bat'leth as far as she could across the dark cave. It slid along the rock and over the edge into a lava flow that wound it's way through the crevices. It didn't make a loud obnoxious sound as it went as was her hope and so she lifted a large stone and hurled it across in another direction.

"Hey! You better be careful with that."

B'Elanna spun at the sound of Commander Chakotay's voice coming around the corner where the rock had vanished. "What the hell are you doing here, Chakotay?"

"Captain Janeway's been concerned about you, you've been reporting for duty late, not eating, and spending all of your rations on extra Holodeck time." He sat on a rocky ledge near her and watched her wipe blood from her hands onto her uniform pants.

"I'm fine." The meek response was the complete opposite of the rage he came in on.

"If that's so, shape up. If not check yourself into Sickbay."

"Yes, Sir." She mumbled, even quieter.

"You took that?"

"What did you expect me to do, call her a liar?" Chakotay sat down across from Kathryn Janeway in her Ready Room.

"No, but… Chakotay, you've known her longer than any of us." Kathryn leaned forward and rested her arms on the desk. "What she went through… Vorik has Tuvok to fall back on, to help him meditate, but B'Elanna doesn't have close friends with whom she'd even think of discussing what happened."

Chakotay nodded and crossed his leg over his knee to study his pants.

"I'm not going to order you to talk to her, but someone needs to, she's going to get sick."

"She trusts you more than you realize." Chakotay eyed Kathryn as he voiced his subtle suggestion.

"Me?" Kathryn stared back in surprise. She and B'Elanna had for the previous two and a half years a shaky relationship at best. "No, no, Chakotay, you can't be serious."

He smiled softly. "Yeah, I thought you'd say that." He laughed and squeezed her hand. "No pressure, Kathryn, if you don't want to, I will."

She watched him for a moment. "I should, right? Oh, Chakotay, you don't make things easy." She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. "What would I say to her?"

"I don't know." Chakotay was leaning on her desk now, watching her. "There are only - what did the doctor tell me officially? - 81 women on board?"

"You are hardly outnumbered, what's your point?"

"She has more guy friends on a ship almost evenly matched, she could use you." He winked. "And, if I may, Captain, you could use her."

"Commander Chakotay tells me you have spare Holodeck time." Kathryn dropped a stack of PADDs down in front of one of the couches in the mess hall and eased down across from B'Elanna.

"Tom helped me establish a … barter system." B'Elanna looked up from her department's shift reports at the captain. "I don't see you down here much."

"No." Kathryn shook her head as she downed the first gulp of hot coffee. She made a face and set the mug down.

"No good?" B"Elanna scanned a PADD on the replicator reports. "They all checked out."

Kathryn shrugged. "Maybe it's me." She leaned back picking up a PADD of her own and sighed softly. "What do you like to do?"

"Not small talk." B'Elanna mumbled. She picked Kathryn's coffee up and sniffed it. "Smells kind of burnt."

Kathryn laughed. "Taste it. It's awful!"

"You're putting my life in danger." B'Elanna smirked as she took a sip. "Bleh!" She nearly dropped it and tapped her combadge. "Torres to Engineering. Who worked on the replicators in the Mess Hall?"

"Ensign Vorik, Lieutenant." Carey's voice hesitated as he said it. "Do you want me to take a look?"

"Yeah, that'd be good. The coffee tastes like a targ threw up into it."

"Pleasant imagery, Lieutenant." Carey responded dryly.

Kathryn hid her laugh behind the PADD she was still holding. "I'm always glad when I'm not losing it."

B'Elanna smiled back and marked off the replicator report as a job not done. Vorik hadn't earned any points with her of late. "Rock climbing."

"Hmm?" Kathryn had all but forgotten with the chaos over the coffee.

"I like rock climbing, and not just on the Holodeck either. You?"

"Small talk." She winked and set the PADD down. "When I was in the Academy I spent a lot of time deep sea diving, even did it on Mars, nearly got myself and my friend killed."

B'Elanna raised an eyebrow cautiously. "Mars caverns were off limits for years."

"My… fiancé… and I were sucked into one of them, we almost didn't make it out."

"Wow. Rebel huh?" B'Elanna set her PADD down and leaned onto the arm of the chair.

"Sometimes." Kathryn smiled. "I really hated him too, I didn't want to die with him, made me even more rebellious."

"You hated your fiancé?"

"Something like that. It was about 15 years and a different fiancé later before I fell in love with him."

B'Elanna felt like she fell into some bittersweet dramatic love story. She'd have to ask her someday, she could use a love story. "So, before he was your fiancé, and you hated him, but you went diving with him?"

"Told you, I was rebellious." She grinned as she caught Carey coming in out of the corner of her eye.

"Quick fix." He called over. They watched him pop the front off and realign the sequencers before replacing it. "Two coffees, black." He carried them over.

Kathryn gave the mug a look before tasting it. "Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Carey."

"He checked them last week, Lieutenant." Carey spoke low to B'Elanna who made a face, knowing how rough 'last week' was.

"I'll ignore it, Joe, thanks." B'Elanna handed him the PADDs she'd approved and nodded as he left.

"You two work well together, I'll give Chakotay that."

"Don't give him too much, he'll get carried away." B'Elanna groaned thinking back to the first month on board. "So, have you tried diving on the Holodeck."

Kathryn nodded, a pained expression suddenly on her face. "The logistics are all wrong, the computer has a difficult time compensating for the depth and can't figure out how to extend it without just flooding the room and there's constant errors. It overloads the circuits and you wind up lying on the floor of an empty holodeck, puddles still around you and a breathing tank still strapped to your back because it can't shut down properly. It's kind of ridiculous."

B'Elanna laughed at the description, picturing the Captain flopping on the ground in heavy dive gear. "That's why I climb."

Kathryn nodded. "Maybe I'll try that next time. I do enjoy my novels though, simple, plain, easily programmed."

"Yeah, Tom and Harry have been playing something out of a 20th century comic. It has no color."

"None?" Kathryn had the same twisted expression as B'Elanna.

"Grayscale. The entire program, even they appear to have no color."

Kathryn shook her head. "To each his own. Mm, I know Tal Celes has a pretty neat skydiving program, but I just can't bring myself to do it."

"She can be bold." B'Elanna left it at that, she wasn't about to badmouth the poor girl in front of the Captain. "I … have two hours of Holodeck time I was going to use, do you want to climb?"

Kathryn was almost hoping that Chakotay was wrong and B'Elanna had no interest in spending any quality time with her. She just didn't know what to do or say. She was ready to protest, to point out the PADDs and make a show of downing the coffee. She's a member of your crew, Kathryn. She set the mug down, slid the PADDs into a neat pile and stood up. "Okay, let's go."

B'Elanna smiled and stood as well, tossing her last two PADDs next to Kathryn's and walking out with her.

"I can't believe you've never done this." B'Elanna was four feet above Kathryn as she anchored another hold between the rocks.

"I learn quick." Kathryn followed B'Elanna's lead as she put her hand in the same place and eased up another couple of inches. The Holodeck quickly compensated for their height without the women even knowing it, the appearance of the ground looking even farther down than before.

"You still get a rush of being thousands of feet up even with the floor of the Holodeck probably an inch or two below you." B'Elanna threw her head back to feel a breeze rushing by.

Kathryn by contrast pressed her face against the rock as the breeze hit. "Yeah, a rush and a small bit of vertigo, although I've never been afraid of heights."

B'Elanna grinned as she continued to switch rope from one anchor to the next. "Well, you owe me a dive when we get home."

Kathryn grinned and lifted her forehead off the rock. "You're on. You and I will steal a shuttle and take it to Mars. We'll get lost."

B'Elanna wondered if they wouldn't all be thrown on a penal colony. Her for being Maquis, the Captain for her questionable decisions since leaving Federation space. Her heart ached for home and familiarty, but she didn't want prison time for any of them.

"Lieutenant Carey to the bridge."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant." Chakotay was sitting quietly, monitoring the engine output as Tom changed course to avoid a dense ion storm.

"Sir, Lieutenant Torres hasn't shown up for her shift."

Chakotay rolled his eyes. "She's probably behind on reports, give her some time, Mr. Carey."

"Sir, I did, it's been four hours."

Chakotay sat forward. "Computer, locate Torres."

"B'Elanna Torres is in Holodeck One."

"Chakotay to Torres."

B'Elanna froze on the rock cliff. "Oh, no."

Kathryn's head was at her waist now. "What?"

"I've completely lost track of time. Go ahead, Commander."

"We discussed the amount of time you're spending in the Holodeck, B'Elanna."

She looked down toward Kathryn. "You're not going to save me are you?"

Kathryn grinned and put her hands up. "He's in charge of duty shifts."

"I lost track of time, Commander. I'll be in engineering in ten minutes, and I'll make it up to Carey."

"You better. Chakotay out."

B'Elanna scaled down to Kathryn's level and smiled sheepishly. "We've been in here a bit."

Kathryn looked down at her rough and calloused finger tips. "I needed a good workout. I'll tell him I was involved in your… forgetfulness."

"Thanks, Captain." She untied one of the knots and than smiled again. "Computer, end program."

The rock face, clouds, birds, and their safety harnesses vanished from around them.

"You're as bad as I am, forgetting the computer will take care of it." Kathryn followed B'Elanna from the room and down toward the turbolift.

"Sometimes I wish I were really on a cliff's edge somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No starships, warp cores, temporal anomalies or … anybody."

"Me too." Kathryn nearly whispered.

"Deck nine, section 12." B'Elanna fell quiet, knowing her Captain's camaraderie had to have a motive. She was far too busy to go scaling mountains on a whim. "Did Chakotay ask you to talk to me?"

"The other way around." Kathryn replied. "I thought you needed some company. He decided it should be me."

"Oh." B'Elanna was quiet again.

"I didn't know that we could get along well enough to drink coffee, finish work and scale… what was the name of that one?"

"El Capitan… It was a favorite of James Kirks, actually."

"I read somewhere he climbed." Kathryn nodded. "I had fun, B'Elanna."

"So did I." The Turbolift came to a halt three doors from B'Elanna's quarters and she stepped out and turned around, stopping the door from closing. "Captain… umm…"

Kathryn stepped forward just a bit and smiled. "Apparently, we both just need a friend."

B'Elanna nodded with a grin. "I'll consent to that."

Kathryn laughed softly. "I'll see you later, B'Elanna."

Fin.