TITLE: Through Twilight's Fading Darkness
AUTHOR/S: Michael
PAIRING: B'Elanna & Seven of Nine
RATING: PG13
BETA READING: Kristin Lelvis
FEEDBACK: or on sight!
DISCLAIMER: Star Trek and all the main characters are owned by Paramount Pictures/CBS Network Television, A Viacom/CBS Corporation. Star Trek: Voyager. Created by, Rick Berman, Michael Piller & Jeri Taylor, and is based on Star Trek. Created by Gene Roddenberry.
This is a piece of fiction, concerning an implied F/F relationship. If anyone objects to same sex relationships, you should not be on this sight, and
should read the Star Trek Range of Novels from Pocket Books, or find another
sight.
SUMMERY: Short, dark and angst ridden. WARNING: contains death of major characters. Big thanks to Rachel for the advice.
Notes: jIH muSHa' SoH wIj be'nal (I love you my wife)
jIH Daq reH bangwI' SoH (I too; my loved one)
Their last journey as senior staff of the USS Voyager, and their last journey together in life, was to a local star system a few light years away, whilst the rest of the Starship's personnel continued a diplomatic mission, securing much needed shore leave.
Janeway had already been in contact with the harbour station, just outside of the star system. Arrangements had been started to allow Voyager's repair crews to have access to all of the station's systems, in order to begin repairs. However, one of the three species that controlled the station was being obstructive, so a Captain/Neelix lead ambassadorial mission was needed.
Kathryn Janeway's orders were simple: to collect resources to replenish Voyager's almost insatiable need for materials. Samples were to be collected which could be used for replication purposes, and food samples, which could be grown in Voyager's Hydroponics lab, which was affectionately known as 'Kes' Garden.'
The 'edible' parts could be used in Neelix's kitchen, and the waste material could be used in the highly efficient bio-generator that Seven had designed to power the Borg alcoves, thus cutting main energy consumption.
B'Elanna had stated beforehand that if she tasted another Leola root concoction, she would not be responsible for her actions. This comment had landed her a reprimand from her captain and her ordered participation on the current assignment, which Seven was all too eager to accompany her on.
Except for the diversion to an unusual Sexternary white dwarf and pulsar system, which Astrometrics had discovered at the same time as the objective star system, the boring and routine assignment had allowed the two women to spend some alone time together - a rarity it seemed on lately on Voyager; and to catch up on various engineering projects that they had formulated over the last year.
Unfortunately interference from the pulsars had made Voyager's sensor scans patchy, so B'Elanna and Seven didn't foresee the early warp colony inhabiting the third moon of the fourth planet, or the Slavers who were plaguing them.
After much debate between themselves and the settlements leaders, then seeing first hand what the Slavers could do, the two Voyager officers decided to help the desperate pioneers. Their plan was simple in design, audacious in its cunning and ultimately victorious. However, it was not without significant damage to the ship and severe injuries to themselves.
Seven had received three broken ribs, which resulted in a punctured lung, and broken ulna and radius bones. Also some of her implants were malfunctioning. Her lower back was numb where the nerves connected to her brachialimplant had been damaged. B'Elanna was worse. Her internal injuries were life threatening, but stable. Seven calculated that the Klingon engineer would survive for the hour it took for Voyager to reach their position, at maximum warp. Unfortunately, they had less than twenty minutes of breathable oxygen left in the crippled Delta Flyer.
"Kahless what a way to go!" B'Elanna commented mirthlessly.
"B'Elanna I don't see any humour in our current situation." Seven stated deadpanning.
The Klingon's laughter turned into a wracking blooded cough.
"I'm sorry I should have not made you laugh," apologised Seven, whilst she administered her companion another pain relieving hypospray.
"Don't worry Soch, going to meet the Barge of the Dead to Sto'Vo'Kor, with a smile on your face is a good thing right?"
"I would think so."
"Do you fear death?" B'Elanna enquired of the blond who was making her more comfortable.
"When I was a drone I would think termination as irrelevant, as we are just tools for the collective."
"What about now?"
"As a drone I gave death many souls; and it took my son away from me. But I also realise that death is a companion, who is with us from the moment we are born. So no I do not fear death, I abhor death."
"I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
"It was the right and principled thing to do. Do you think I could have walked away? Those children's plight affected me as much as it did you."
Seven did not want to spend the remaining moments they had left arguing. B'Elanna was too important to her for that.
"What about you?" she asked changing the subject.
"What?" murmured B'Elanna sleepily.
"Do you fear death?"
"Kahless no! A Klingon does not fear death. If death is coming, we embrace it, and make sure it's honourable. I know that I am only half Klingon, but if there is one thing about my non human heritage I agree with, it is honour. That's why I joined the Maquis, because what they believed in was moral."
B'Elanna remembered the faces of the captured children when they had released them, and a smile graced her lips. She would be sitting at Kahless' table in Sto'Vo'Kor with her be'nal at her side.
Another wracking cough seized B'Elanna. Seven gently wiped the blood and spittle from B'Elanna's face. Using a Tricorder, the former drone scanned her injured mate.
B'Elanna was fading fast. Her breathing was short and laboured and she had started to haemorrhage again. Seven had stemmed the flow last time, by reprogramming some of her nano-probes to help repair the damage, and to support B'Elanna's redundant organs. Regrettably, the injuries were too acute for both the redundant organs and the probes to cope with. She estimated that B'Elanna would most likely be dead within ten minutes, and she would be joining her five or so minutes later.
The former drone carefully pulled the sliver emergency blanket more tightly around them, and then gently lowered B'Elanna's head onto her chest, and closed her own eyes.
"Be'nal," B'Elanna whispered. "There is something I need to say to you."
Seven tenderly stroked the top of the brunets head, and lovingly kissed her forehead ridges. "You can tell me anything bangwI'."
B'Elanna gulped in thinning air, and it felt like she had a warp core breach inside of her. She pushed the pain aside and continued. "After Paris used me and dumped me, you saved me from myself. No matter what happened, no matter how many dreadful names I berated you with, you stubbornly stuck by me, dragging me from my depressive self, to something so much better. We've gone through a lot together, be'nal, but this year of marriage has been the happiest time of my life."
"B'Elanna; I …"
"I know. Me, too..." B'Elanna murmured. "jIH muSHa' SoH wIj be'nal," She finished, and for the last time B'Elanna Torres, daughter of Miral, closed her eyes.
"Hold the barge for me bangwI. I won't be long," Seven whispered softly, staring into B'Elanna's open eyes; and she announced to Sto'Vo'Kor that a new warrior was arriving.
Seven wept.
The honoured Klingon dead are not meant to be mourned, but celebrated. However she wasn't Klingon. She was half Borg and half human, and the little human child, Annika Hansen, that still lived inside of her wanted to cry. She wept for her dead son, the people she had assimilated as a drone. She shed tears for her lost childhood, abandoned in the hands of not only the Borg, but her parents as well, but she mostly wept for her dead wife.
The woman who taught her how to be human, more than the Doctor and the Captain ever did. Who showed her that she would never be alone, and in the last year had made her complete
Seven of Nine, Tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One groggily looked at her be'nal lying in her arms. As she took her final breath, she stroked the chestnut brown hair for the last time. "jIH Daq reH bangwI' SoH," she whispered and joined her beloved wife on the Barge of the Dead.
The End