by august
cJan 2000
a modest, melancholy offering. my first shot at janeway/torres and it turned out to be like nothing I had envisaged. still, ALIWS.
with respect to paramount, who own this beast and with love to f, who owns me.
I resent her sleep. On this stifling night, I resent her even breathing and quiet turnings. I glare at her in the dark, hoping to wake her with the power of my thoughts. She lies, oblivious.
These summer nights are amazing, but never more so than in her immaculate apartment with its walls smelling of paint. They say after deep space mission it sometimes takes months, even years to acclimatise to being planetside. After my years in the Maquis, and then Voyager I am beginning to wonder if there can be such a thing as acclimatisation. The air sits in her room, unmoving and heavy. In my mind I can feel it surrounding me, clouding me, crushing me.
She doesn't wake when I get out of bed. I had never imagined her as being a heavy sleeper; had clung to this idealised vision of her being racked with insomnia. Sleeping beauty, her body turns and rearranges itself into my absence. She is prettiest asleep, I decide.
The city is still busy around us. I press my fingers to the cool touch pad and let myself onto her balcony. The night is a hive of activity, like an ants nest, swarming after it has been kicked apart. I sit down, and wonder how I tonight found myself sharing her bed, after all these years.
* * *
I picked her up from the station. She had moved back to San Francisco a few months ago, after spending a few years in space. We all went our separate ways after returning to Earth, but the Captain was one of the few who had gone straight out again. I suspected the pick-up had fallen to me by default. She and Chakotay had not talked since we returned, and everyone else was either occupied or had lost contact. We knew each other scarcely, and anyway that was a long time ago.
She had been out of town for a few days for a family funeral. Mostly, I am wary of those situations; grief always makes me uncomfortable. Makes us all uncomfortable but some are better at hiding it. Still, I knew with the Captain it would not be awkward, her grief would be silent. It had been a long time since I had known her, but I was willing to bet that that, at least, had not changed.
I met her at baggage claim, where we picked up her overnight bag. She had traveled lightly. I wondered why she had not transported straight to her apartment, surely her rank would afford her that privilege even in these times of war. Still, she smiled as she saw me and I felt an old and almost unfamiliar turning in my stomach.
"I can't thank you enough for doing this." She slung the bag on her shoulder and it pulled the collar of her jacket down unevenly. I had somehow expected her to travel in uniform, her black suit and cream shirt threw me.
"It's not a problem. Really." We walked through the sliding doors. A wave of humidity washed over us.
"You were the only one I knew well enough to ask…so I did."
"It's no problem." I repeated, leading her to the shuttle.
She lived, as I had suspected, in an affluent Starfleet dominated area. Another type of ghetto, the Federation could not eradicate that. She told me that she bought her house when we first returned from the Delta Quadrant (although, like most of us, she never said 'Delta Quadrant' - she said 'when I returned' and leaves it at that.
The garden was perfect, I noticed, as we pulled up to the curb. A cultivated look specific to Fleeters and those given to extended periods of absence. Tom used to show me old television advertisements for something called 'roll-on lawn'. If we weren't the age of replicators and enhanced generation cycles, roll-on lawn struck me as something that would have been well at home in the house of Kathryn Janeway.
She noticed my attention and smiled. "I don't have a hell of a lot of things to be extravagant over. This is one of them." She pulled her case out of the shuttle and held it in front of her. Her hand spun one of the tags attached to the handle in fast circles as she spoke. "I'm sorry that I haven't contacted you before now, B'Elanna. I've thought about you often."
"Voyager seems like a long time ago, sometimes. Sometimes I even forget it happened."
She continued, like she hadn't heard me speak. "Come in for a drink? Have you eaten? I'm going to make something - will you join me?"
I nodded, and followed her into the house.
*
"Computer, lights." She set her case down, and I felt like I had just walked into her quarters. It was immaculate, but more than that, it looked like it hadn't been lived in. Which, I guess, it hadn't been.
I found myself slipping back into Maquis mode - accessing the situation, ready to give a report. The walls were white, still smelling of paint. The room extended back onto a full sized window, looking out onto the Gate. Against one wall there was a black couch and table, against the other there were boxes stacked almost to the ceiling. There was an almost empty wine bottle, a few files and some padds resting on some of the boxes, but it took me a moment to realise that the room was absolutely bare.
I had spent most of my adult life if not idolising, then at idealising her. I can't possibly explain what it was like to walk into a room that was still packed up into boxes. To see, finally, her perfectly compartmentalised life.
She seemed embarrassed. "I've had no reason to unpack yet; I always get called away."
Roll on lawn, roll on life. I didn't know what to say that, so I sat down. "You can see the Gate from here." I said deliberately, flicking my gaze over to the window.
"Oh B'Elanna, I had hoped we were beyond scenery conversation." She laughed, taking her jacket off. Black disappearing, cream appearing and a white strap over her shoulder.
"Alright, well what do you think about the Federation's decision to deregulate the Bajoran currency and bring it in line with the Alpha-ten section?"
She laughed again. "And we've never agreed on politics."
"Doesn't leave us a lot to talk about, does it?" I smiled, trying not to notice myself noticing her feet as she slipped out of her shoes.
"I'm sure we'll find something. Make yourself at home, I'm just going to change out of these clothes."
And then I was alone in the empty room, with it's white walls smelling of paint and loneliness. I realised then that the room reminded me of houses I had seen in Bajor, after my return. The Federation had spent money re-building houses after the occupation; one of my last jobs for them had been an evaluation of the structural engineering. A far cry from what I was used to, but those were tough days. Houses that smelled like paint for people who were just glad they were no longer tasting blood.
I looked back outside. The bay, at least, offered a reprieve. I wondered, for the first time that night, just what the hell I was doing there. Why she had called me, and why I had accepted.
"What would you like to eat?" She called out, from another room. I stood and followed the voice. She was in fatigues, her hair slightly wet and pinned up.
"Can I help with anything?" I asked, lingering in the doorway.
"No, I've been replicating for a while now."
"It makes you appreciate what Neelix did every day, doesn't it?"
"Neelix." She smiled. "How's he doing? Have you heard?"
"Tom saw him sometime last year, I think. He was living with a...a Bolian, I think it was."
"Tom or Neelix?" She said jokingly.
"Neelix."
"Oh B'Elanna, I'm sorry. I... I was sorry to hear about you and Tom."
I shrugged. "It was over with Tom a long time before it was...over."
"Oh." She opened a cupboard and pulled out two wine glasses. "Was it?"
I didn't answer immediately, and I think she mistook my silence for embarrassment.
"When I was on the Barge of the Dead." I said, suddenly honest. I picked up one of the glasses to have a closer look, disturbing the thin film of dust that had settled on the table.
"Well I guess that's understandable - it was a hard time for you."
"Tom ended it."
"Oh?" She looked a little surprised by that, and I almost smiled. After all this time and all of his fuck-ups she still thought the best of him.
I shrugged. "It had been coming a while."
"Do you keep in touch?"
"Yeah. I had dinner there last month - he's living with an actor who seemed lovely; they seem happy."
"What about you? Are you seeing anyone?"
I smiled fleetingly. "No one lovely."
She shot me a glance, an appraising gaze and then looked back down again. It was quick enough for me to think maybe I had imagined it, but long enough for me to know that I hadn't.
"Go take a seat, I'll bring everything out in a minute."
*
I wandered about the room again, until I found myself in front of the boxes. They were marked: 'Kitchen', 'Bedroom', 'Study'. I picked up one of the padds sitting on the boxes, wondering what would merit such special treatment, wondering what could be important enough to be fished out from storage.
And then I saw Chakotay's ID number. I read the padd once, and then again. It was a strangely melancholy letter.
"Do you want...?" She came out of the kitchen holding two bottles. I felt like a school child who had been caught stealing. The padd suddenly felt heavy in my hand.
"I'm sorry...I recognised Chakotay's sig number..."
She was frozen, silent holding two plates of pasta. They smelled delicious. Later, I would exaggerate the silence in my mind, would pull it out into a infinite pause. In reality, I'm sure that she spoke quickly, that she crossed the room and took charge of the situation, like she always had.
"It's not what it looks like." She said, setting down the pasta only to take the padd from my hands.
"I'm sorry. You don't have to explain... I'm sorry, I had no right to..." My face felt hot, like it was flushed. I was reminded of a time, so long ago now, when I had tried to install the Sikarian technology against the Captain's wishes. Like then, I would have given anything not to be standing in front of her now.
"It's a silly thing to keep, really." She looked down at the padd, almost affectionately. "He wrote to me when we came back from New Earth."
"You were involved." The realisation dawned slowly.
"Only on New Earth."
"You were involved."
"Not really. Not in the way you think." She put the padd inside one of the boxes. "Don't look so shocked, B'Elanna -- you and Tom were together for six years; you weren't the only ones who had a relationship in the Delta Quadrant."
I sat down. She sat opposite me, but on the edge of the chair, warily.
"Why only New Earth?"
"What?"
"You said 'only on New Earth'. Why?"
She sighed and sat back. "Lots of reasons. It was different, on Voyager. You know that."
"Why not when we came back, then? You two hardly talk."
"No, we never talk." She attempted a smile. "I don't know. Things happened so quickly: we lost the ship to the Kazon, then we were in Borg territory, then the Hirogen - there was always something." She laughed a little, to herself. "Seven."
"You slept with Seven?" I said automatically. It was an abrupt question, but it stopped the 'how?' 'why?' 'when?' that were on the tip of my tongue.
"Don't say it like that, B'Elanna. I was in love with her for a long time."
"Why isn't she here now?" I looked around, half expecting Seven to walk through the doors.
"It wasn't long enough, I guess."
I fell quiet, we both did. She picked up her fork and prodded the pasta. It was now cold and stuck together. She carefully placed the fork back down and began speaking, without looking at me. "I kept Chakotay's letter all these years because I read it sometimes, to remind me of what it was like to have someone so...involved in me. And then I put it away because I remember what that feels like. A kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. It's something to remind me to feel."
Had I not been sitting across from her, pretending to study my pasta and feeling like I was intruding on a private conversation I would have reached out to her then. A perfect Klingon coward, I didn't have a thing to say.
"Old demons never leave us, do they?" I heard myself say, hoping she would understand. She looked at me quizzically for a moment.
"Ah. The incense."
"It never cleared up, did it?" I held her gaze.
"I wanted you alive, B'Elanna. I can't apologise for that."
"What I could never understand...when we were building the Delta Flyer, you came to visit me in sick-bay. The doctor had told you I had been...about the bones and the bruises...do you remember what you said, Captain?"
"Not Captain." She said softly.
"I had told you that I just didn't care anymore. I had never told anyone that before. You held my face then, do you remember? And you walked away."
"I-"
"-You could walk away." I finished for her. "Nothing else..."
She moved closer to me, her hand on my forearm. I could feel her breath on my neck. Until then, I could have told myself that this was just a dinner, that she was just my C.O. If I had wanted to. "Don't think of them as demons, B'Elanna. They can be a ghosts."
"Is there a difference?" I whispered, meeting her gaze.
"We all have ghosts - it's what we do with them that's important." She smiled, and it was an invitation.
"Is that what Chakotay is? And Seven? Is that what I am?"
She just looked at me with wide eyes.
"I should go." I said, standing.
"No. No, you shouldn't."
I half-smiled. My head was swimming, I had too much to drink. "Yeah, I should."
"No, just stay. I haven't seen you -- stay, we won't argue anymore."
"That's what I'm worried about."
I could have mistaken her silence for...something, I guess.
I spoke suddenly, before I lost my nerve. "It ended with Tom after the Barge of the Dead because he said I looked for you."
"You what?"
"I looked for you." I placed my glass on her table. "After everything that happened, in sick bay the first person I looked for was you."
She drank. "Is that true?"
"I've always looked for you."
She didn't take me to her bed then, exactly. Her hand was on my shoulder and she pushed me down onto the couch. She sat on the edge of her table, facing me as we talked. I was acutely aware of her hand tracing against my forearm and then of her eyes as she leaned in to kiss me.
She took me then, to her bed. I came with a force I am rarely accustomed to, with her body on me and her hand over me. It had been a long time since I had been fucked by a ghost, since I had fucked like a ghost. We talked for a little about absolutely nothing and after a while she slipped off to sleep.
* * *
I resent her sleep. Sitting on this balcony, I am sure of it. Wittgenstein said that the body is the best picture of the soul. Sassoon said that when we sleep, we are a reminder of the dead.
In this sleep, in her sleep, I can decide to leave.
I call for a transport quietly and shut the door behind me. As I lie later that night in my own bed, I cannot stop thinking about the Captain and her white walls, her possessions in boxes and a letter which, occasionally, reminds her to feel.