Chapter 14: Rumours
Valerie's POV:

I found myself sitting in the mess hall with Kes; it was anyway dinner time so we'd decided to eat together if she anyway wanted to talk to me. Neelix's food was… definitely special and rather interesting today so I just forced a smile on my face while I ate, noticing how Kes laughed slightly at the probably pained look on my face.

"You don't like it" she stated, smiling at me.

"It's a… interesting taste… so… why'd you want to talk to me? I mean I know I haven't gotten around to you and Neelix it just seemed that you two were settling into this better than most of the other crew…" I explained smiling back at her, trying to stop myself from staring at her ears. They were a lot different with the way they pointed and the ridges. But still I do have enough sense to know that staring is rude!

"I spoke to the captain about this earlier…" she said softly before she paused suddenly.

"And you didn't reach a proper conclusion?"

"Exactly… well you see it's not about Neelix or I, we're loving it here and everyone treats us well… but you see, it's about the doctor…" she said trailing off before she took a sip of whatever that green drink she was having was.

"So what is this mystery without conclusion?" I said in my best mysterious, yet still silly voice as I gave her a pointed look as she burst out laughing. I couldn't help the way I too started to laugh at that though. Considering we were almost alone, minis Neelix and a few of the other crew members also having dinner or some sort of snack before they took a night shift it didn't matter how stupid we were.

Despite the fact that rumours do seem to travel quicker on Voyager and anywhere I've ever known, and that's saying something considering all it takes at school is about 1 maybe 2 hours for everyone to know something!

Then again we only had the same amount of people as an average year group… maybe add an extra class. But still there were only 141 people approximately that were on board… so what could you do about it anyway?

"Well… I spoke to the captain about the way people treat the doctor. How rude they are and inconsiderate… some of them talk about him in front of him and then pretend he doesn't even exist while he's treating them..."

"Yeah, I noticed that as well but go on… what did the captain say?" I asked her, smiling encouragingly as I continued eating whatever it was. And no, I don't want to know. It could be some creatures heart, or eyes and I wouldn't want to know… I was definitely going vegetarian when we got back, though on the bright side we'd managed to find that other planet and take omicron particles (or whatever they're called) for more energy, meaning that replicator rations, though still important weren't a desperate thing.

"She said that there were complaints about him being rude to patients and that they were thinking about re-programming him!" she said, looking rather worked up about the idea.

"He is a bit… sarcastic and he doesn't exactly have proper bed side etiquette but he can still learn those things… and I think he could also learn about human tendencies, habits, stuff like that to get a better idea about it…" I said, giving him lessons in social understanding might actually help considering what Harry had taught me about the doctor being programmed with the ability to adapt and to learn.

"That's true but they can't just re-program him can they?" she asked, and I couldn't help the large breath of air I let out.

"She's the captain Kes, and she's right in one aspect, he may be 'living' as far as the both of us can see it but he is nothing more than a program, especially in the mind set of people from the 24th century" I explained to her, trying to stay calm and rather… objective I think the word is to the current situation.

It would do no good if I just threw a bit of a hissy fit and stormed over to the captain…

"It's not right though…" she said argumentatively and I couldn't help but not at what she was saying. Placing my hand on her arm for a second I looked her in the eyes and tried to get her to understand that I was on her side.

"Look I understand how you feel about this Kes, and I don't understand it either but I promise that if the captain ever brings this up to me, I'll be against re-programming him. If she ever does bring this up I'll argue on his side and try to make her understand what both of us, especially you see in him considering the amount of time you spend with him"

"Thanks Counsellor" she said smiling at me.

"Val" I corrected taking a gulp of my coffee. "I may be the counsellor but that as a title would kill me, plus I call you Kes..."

"Ok… Val. So what's going on with you and Ensign Kim?" she suddenly asked, causing me to cough slightly.

"What do you mean?" I asked looking at her as if she was insane.

"You spend a lot of time with him… and I saw you two dancing together in the holodeck at Sandrine's after both of you got off duty" she said, smiling at me with a little twinkle in her eye.

"Nothing's going on between Harry and me…" I said trailing off unsurely. "We were dancing to get rid of Sandrine who was sexually harassing him… and he seemed to be avoiding my office so it gave me an excuse to question him about what was going on…"

Let's just say that devilish little Ocampa didn't believe a word of it and insisted on teasing me to try and get something out of me. And you know that moment when you blush but not because you're guilty, but because you're being accused of something that you either disagree with or just never did or felt? Yeah, that's how I felt by the end of it, though I somehow think that got warped to a I love Harry from a 'No I do not!'

I was never going to be able to live this down was I?

~OoO~

Rather against my will, and fairly grouchily might I add, I woke up and curled to the side about to fall asleep again when I took a second to look at the clock. 8:52am… alarmed I threw the covers off of me and pulled the uniform from yesterday on, stumbling around as I tried not to fall while finding my second shoe.

Eventually though I managed, attaching the combadge and running out to the turbo-lift with some of my bobby lips lightly clamped between my lips. Reaching up I grabbed them with my hand, pushing them to the sleeve of my long sleeve shirt thing while I quickly zipped it up before anyone else joined me.

"Deck 1" I said and heard the familiar sound as it took off, taking that moment to start running my hands through my hair for any of the larger knots, I'd have to brush my hair properly later but for now I had a deadline to make it to the bridge. Twisting it I put it up against the base of my head, pinning it there before tucking the ends in and pinning them under right as the doors of the turbo lift opened.

It was good that I was quick at doing my hair in the mornings from so many days of sleeping in. And then I noticed that the captain wasn't even here yet. Fighting back the sigh I nodded at the others, quite aware that despite being up my hair was probably a lot messier than normal. That's what I get for not having hair spray everywhere with me!

Looking forward I saw Tom wink at me and glared. He'd probably already heard about that conversation with Kes… then I couldn't help blushing and averting my eyes, wishing that I hadn't done my hair so I could simply hide behind the blonde curls like I had so many times when I faced embarrassment before.

"We're ready to try a visual link with the Romulan ship captain" Tuvok said shortly after I resorted to hiding myself… well as much as possible considering it was the bridge!

"Good work" she responded, her expression rather… emotionless I guess.

"We didn't have any trouble configuring the protocols but that phase variance in the radiation stream gave us a few problems. Torres is going to balance it manually from engineering" Harry said suddenly, explaining everything to captain Janeway… as she obviously didn't really know everything that was going on.

What interested me was how long Harry and Torres had been up to work all this out!

"Ok, we've got the communication frequency locked in" Tom said, turning to another screen.

"On screen" Kathryn said, smiling. I had a strange feeling that this would become… rather... interesting!

A/N There's today's chapter but I'll probably have another one up for you guys tonight Hope you liked it, all criticism and ideas are welcomed!