Episode 1x11 – State of Flux

Disclaimer: All things Star Trek belong to Paramount and CBS. I'm just writing the bits that TPTB seemed to have missed.

Note: These are the missing scenes at the end of State of Flux, after Seska's defection to the Kazon Nistrim.

"Lieutenant, it is inadvisable to use the wall of your quarters as a punching bag," Voyager's CMO lectured as he placed a bone knitter on the chief engineer.

The snap of the instrument closing around her battered hand sent a jolt of pain up B'Elanna's arm. "Hey, watch it!" she snarled, trying to snatch her hand away.

He held her fast, pulling her wrist closer so that he could treat her. "Hold still."

She sat and watched him work, molars grinding together with impatience. The Doctor didn't even look up when he observed, "I take it that this is the result of Seska's departure."

"Mind your own business," she shot back, wishing she'd thought to mute his vocal subroutines.

The rest of her treatment was performed in silence, and her physician had just administered a pain reliever to her neck when he heard the doors from the corridor open. The Doctor looked up to see the first officer walking in, one hand carefully cradling the other. "Well, I certainly didn't expect to see you in my Sickbay again today, Commander," he commented, pointing him toward an empty bed.

"Just fix it," Chakotay snapped, using his good hand to lift himself up onto the mattress.

Ignoring his latest patient's sour mood, the Doctor ran his tricorder sensor in circles around the injury. "Congratulations Commander. You've broken two proximal phalanges and three metacarpals." He moved away to retrieve another bone knitter, leaving both flesh-and-blood crew members alone.

"Three metacarpals," B'Elanna commented as she turned on her own bed to face him. "I only managed to break one."

Chakotay finally noticed that she was in the room, and seeing her hand immobilized in a device, he knew exactly why she was there. "Then you weren't trying hard enough," he groused, his gaze returning to the purpling skin of his knuckles.

"Wall?"

"Door." What he didn't tell her was that the fracture came with his final blow against the bulkhead in his quarters, and by then, his coordination was off and he'd caught the edge of the doorframe with the unprotected parts of his fingers.

"Ouch."

The Doctor returned, and hummed to himself as he realigned Chakotay's bones. When he was done, he administered another pain reliever and told his patient, "Your hand must remain immobilized in the knitter for twelve minutes." Then, as he turned around to head into his office, he told Torres, "You have another six minutes to go."

They both watched him go in silence, soon drawn into their own thoughts. After some time, B'Elanna started. "Some day, huh?"

He recognized her attempt to draw him out. Normally he would have rebuffed her, but even after going three rounds with the wall, Chakotay still felt like he was going to explode. "I've had better," he managed before heaving a heavy sigh.

She recognized the dark clouds that surrounded him – she'd seen it many times before on the Liberty. So instead, she asked, "How's the captain taking it?"

If he was surprised at her change in direction, he didn't show it. "Like a Starfleet officer."

"Meaning that she probably hasn't spent the last hour punching out walls, huh?"

She was relieved to see the lines in his forehead ease, if only a little. "I doubt it," he finally agreed before slipping back into his brooding thoughts.

Her first reaction was always to violence, but the person that she wanted to beat into paste was no longer on the ship. "I'd kill her if I could get my hands on her." When he didn't respond, she lapsed into silence, not sure what to say next. Eventually, she settled on, "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," he mumbled.

"I didn't see it coming," she admitted.

"Me either. And I should have been the first one to see it."

"She fooled everyone."

It was no comfort. "Yeah."

The trill of the bone knitter indicated that B'Elanna's treatment was done. Seeing the hologram starting to head out into the ward, she called out, "Computer, deactivate EMH," and he shimmered out of existence mid-stride. When she looked at her friend, she saw his surprise at what she just did. But he needed to talk, and the last thing they needed was a nosy hologram getting in the way. "It's not your fault," she reminded him as she fought with the instrument's release mechanism. "You didn't bring her into the Maquis."

"No, but I brought her into my bed." His expression turned sour, he visibly shivered as he absently swiped at his skin with his free hand. "My god, I fucked a Cardassian! I took the enemy to my bed without a second thought!"

"You fucked a Bajoran named Seska," she pointed out as she slid down off the bed. "You had no way of knowing."

His eyes rolled. "Yeah, because that makes it so much better."

She folded her arms over her chest, absently noting that the pain in her hand had lessened significantly. "Would you have willingly slept with her if you knew she was Cardassian?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Well, would you have?"

"Of course not!"

"Then stop it."

"You don't get it," he told her. "Not only did I endanger our cell and every mission that we ever went on, but now I've also endangered everyone on Voyager!" His anger boiled over, and the only thing that kept him on the bed was that his hand was stuck in the knitter. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? Tell me that!"

She growled. "If you want absolution, go to Janeway. Don't yell at me!"

They were feeding off one another. "Why are you getting mad at me?" he charged.

"Because I'm pissed off!" she snapped, angrily stalking away from him and across the length to the Doctor's office. "And she's not here for me to rip apart!" Her breath ran out, and when she paused to draw another, an angry sadness washed over her. "And…I feel guilty."

Chakotay frowned, ire suddenly cut off at her change in tone. "For what?"

B'Elanna sighed, and slowly started making her back toward him until she could lean back against the bed she had been treated on. "Because I really thought it was Joe," she admitted, closely examining her newly-healed hand. "I didn't want to believe that someone I was that close to could be a traitor."

"Get in line." She noticed his good fist clenching on his thigh. B'Elanna barely heard him when he said, "I knew it was her."

Her jaw dropped. "You did?" He just nodded. "How?"

He drew a deep breath. "I didn't want to. I knew that she was reckless, and that sometimes she was cruel, but I was….well, in denial, I guess. But once Tuvok started the investigation, I started to put it all together. Carey misses his family too much to want to do anything but get home. Seska…Seska had nothing to lose."

She nodded, but before she could say anything, the instrument on his hand beeped, prompting the holographic systems to kick in yet again. The Doctor barely got a syllable out this time before Chakotay barked, "Computer, deactivate EMH," evaporating the CMO before he could lodge any protest. He then opened the knitter himself, and jumped down off the bed once he was freed. B'Elanna watched him as he raked his fingers through his hair while obviously trying to process everything. "How could I be so blind?" he wondered aloud. Then he mumbled, "I've put us all in danger."

There was nothing else she could say, other than, "Yeah. You did."

That simple confirmation took the wind out of his sails, and he leaned against the bed which he had stopped next to, scrubbing his face with his hands once again. "What am I going to do?"

B'Elanna shrugged. "There's not much we can do. Keep our eyes peeled for Kazon and kill that bitch if we see her."

Finally, finally, she saw the beginnings of a tiny smile. "There may be a lineup," he offered quietly.

She shrugged one more time. "I don't doubt it." B'Elanna then stretched her newly-healed hand toward him. "Come on. Let's go get drunk."

He hadn't really touched much alcohol since coming to Voyager, but in his Maquis days, it was a much more common occurrence; always when someone close to them died, sometimes in celebration. And in a revelation that made his skin crawl, usually when he was aroused and needed some release with Seska. Taking her hand, he shrugged. "I know where there's some real alcohol."

B'Elanna looked at him squarely. "You know too?"

"Too? How many people know about that still?"

"More than I thought, obviously." They disappeared out into the corridor, doors swishing in silence behind them.

A few minutes later, Crewman Marks stumbled in, limping heavily on his left side from a tumble he took on the holodeck. Looking around, he saw that the bay was empty, and called out, "Computer, activate EMH."

The EMH shimmered into view in mid-step, saying, "-el, let's have a look at that hand…" He stopped when he saw that his two patients were gone, instead replaced by a young blond man who was now leaning against one of the beds. Peering around Sickbay, he scowled. "Well, that was rather rude."