Burdens
By Laura Schiller
A Star Trek: Voyager Fanfiction
Copyright: Paramount
"I think the last batch of people are just about recovering now," Billy said cheerfully, steering Celes by the small of her back through Fair Haven's high street. "Look, there's Ensign Vorik, and there's Crewman Chell talking with Maggie. He wouldn't be smiling like that if he didn't have his memories, right?"
Celes followed the direction of his nod. Chell's blue face was indeed lit up with delight as he tucked a rose from the hologram's cart into his commbadge. But she could see further than that, things Billy wasn't even noticing: the Ashmores walking with a metre's distance between them along the cobblestones; Ken Dalby bursting out the doors of the Ox and Lamb as if he'd been kicked; Ensign Gilmore trailing her hand along the fence posts with a blank, lost look on her face.
She sighed. "It's Chell. He's always smiling, remember?"
Billy laughed and threw his head back. "Isn't it gorgeous? God, I missed this place."
Celes tried to see what he saw, but couldn't quite manage. How pale and cool the holographic sunlight was compared to Quarra's, how perfect the half-timbered buildings, and how nothing smelled like it was supposed to: not the horse hitched to the cart Seamus was driving past, not the flowers in Maggie's cart, not even the ocean that she knew was just a short walk away. Even the breeze touched her face precisely every ten seconds. It felt wrong. For that matter, so did the rest of the ship, but at least it wasn't as obvious.
"When I say I missed it, of course," Billy added, letting her catch his arm to steer him around a puddle, "I mean I would have missed it if I'd been myself. What a nightmare. Can you imagine being mindless workers in that power plant forever? With those scientists messing around in our heads?" He shuddered.
"It wasn't all bad," Celes blurted out before he could stop herself.
"Are you kidding me?" Billy dropped her arm and threw up his hands in disbelief. "They violated us! I had nightmares for weeksabout ending up with Dysphoria Syndrome, only to find out that it was the cure we should've been scared of. How is that not bad?"
"I was happy there!"
Celes cringed at the volume of her own voice echoing shrilly down the street. Heads turned to stare at them; Gilmore flushed visibly before hurrying away. Lieutenant Paris looked concerned, even took a step towards them, but the heavily pregnant Torres tugged him into the Ox and Lamb instead.
"You were?" Billy stared at her with wide, wounded brown eyes.
"I know it was fake," she forced her voice lower, "But it felt real enough back then! Am I the only one who can say it? My job was easy, my supervisor was pleased with me for once in my life, I made new friends, I got to feel real sunlight every day and walk by the river … And it felt so safe there, remember? No phaser fights, no spatial anomalies trying to crush us, no alien intruders … " A lump came into her throat as she remembered the horror of watching the dark matter centipede crawl inside Billy, or the time he caught the Macrovirus, or any of the moments during this six-year ordeal that she'd nearly lost him. "For once, I didn't have to worry about you."
A sharp intake of breath from Billy made her flinch. She should have known that was exactly the wrong thing to say.
"Billy, no, I'm sorry – "
"I didn't realize I was such a burden," he said, in a flat, controlled tone that gave her the shivers. "How nice for you, having the chance to forget all about me for those weeks. You should've said so."
"I didn't mean – "
"I thought I was the one carrying weight. Who's been doing your sensor analyses for you every other night, eh?"
The unfairness of that – along with the grain of truth at the bottom - took her breath away. He didn't exactly do them for her, but he did contribute more than he should have according to Starfleet regulations. Her hands clenched in the folds of the ankle-length brown dress he'd convinced her to wear; her ribs felt squeezed in her corset. Ridiculous costume, she'd never wear it again.
"If that's how you feel about it," she said, clenching her shaking hands into fists, "I can manage them perfectly on my own from now on. And I'll sleep alone too! Computer, open holodeck doors."
She whirled through the doors and out into the corridor without looking back, or else the sight of those eyes would have made her anger crumble like a sandcastle in the tide.
=/\=
"Bravo, Mr. Telfer." A slow clap startled Billy out of his shock.
He looked around, saw nothing, and finally looked down. A human man in Starfleet engineering uniform crouched beside a nearby house, a section of white wall opened to reveal a holodeck control panel. A tool kit lay next to him on the grass. His buzz-cut hair, square jaw and sardonic voice added up in Billy's mind to the last person he wanted to see him like this.
"Harren." He gritted his teeth. "What are you doing here?"
"Repairs." Mortimer Harren grimaced, as if the word tasted sour, and typed a few lines on the control panel for evidence. "I'd ask what you're doing here, but it seems pretty obvious."
"Why aren't you on Deck Fifteen writing your thesis about multiple Big Bangs or whatever?"
"Because this ship's a disaster zone and so are the people," Harren grumbled, "And our illustrious captain seems to think that making the holodeck a quote-unquote "priority" will somehow keep everyone from running amok. Doesn't seem to work on you, though, does it?" He stared up at Billy with narrow gray eyes.
"I'm not running amok."
Harren grabbed his tool kit, got to his feet with a creak and a grunt, and leaned against the side of the house with folded arms. "No, what you're doing is acting like an idiot, which even she," he jerked his head to where the holodeck doors had vanished, "Is smart enough to realize."
Billy had the urge to punch Harren for insulting Celes, but he knew perfectly well how hypocritical that would be at the moment. Still, the smug look on the engineer's face made him itch like a medium-sized allergic reaction.
"You don't even have relationships," he retorted.
"You don't know me," said Harren. "Since our historical away mission, I've found that sociology makes almost as intriguing a study as cosmology. I've been trying to repay the Captain's investment in us. I'd have thought you and Tal would do the same, but you're as stuck in your co-dependent little bubble as you always were."
Some distant part of Billy wanted to laugh, remembering that away mission. Looking back, the last person he had expected to benefit from the Captain's motherly attention was Harren, who had sneered at her every step of the way. But it did make sense; Harren had been so lonely under his façade that being thrown together with his shipmates – even getting the chance to save their lives – must have been an epiphany. Billy and Celes, especially after going from friends to lovers, had never thought they needed anyone but each other.
The Captain's investment. Billy thought guiltily of the single vision quest he'd endured with Commander Chakotay, trying to cope with his hypochondria. The hallucinations of Borg nanoprobes, the Phage, transporter malfunctions and other horrors had sent him stumbling out the door, and doing his utmost to avoid the Commander after that, who in turn had more important things to think of, like saving the ship. Billy had fallen back to his old habit of relying on Celes, which had felt natural at the time, but now …
"Co-dependent? Really?"
"When was the last time you talked to anyone besides her?" Billy opened his mouth; Harren held up his hand as a stop sign. "Off-duty, I mean."
"Uh … right now?"
Harren cracked a smile, which was oddly reassuring. "Touche. Look, there's a kal-toh tournament running on Wednesday evenings in the mess hall. Ensign Kim started it. It's not a big event, though, so we can always use new players."
Billy was thrown. Had he just heard Mortimer Harren trying – in his own obnoxious way – to be friendly?"
"I, uh … I don't know the game."
"What, too difficult?" The engineer rolled his eyes. "All right, I understand. It is a game of logic, after all."
"That does it. You're on, Harren. Time and place?"
"I'll comm you." Harren reached out and gave Billy a surprisingly hard punch on the shoulder. "Now are you just going to stand there, or are you going after Tal?"
"I - " He was about to protest that she needed her space, that he wouldn't know what to say to her, but all those excuses shriveled into nothing under Harren's sharp eyes. Billy was fed up with his own cowardice. The other man had a point; he should go.
"You're right."
"I'm always right," Harren scoffed. "Believe me … " For a moment, the veneer of arrogance seemed to crack, giving him the air of a lonely boy at boarding school waiting for someone to fetch him home. "You'll regret it if you don't."
A hundred brand-new questions occurred to Billy, but they could wait.
"Computer, open holodeck doors."
