AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
"Is she asleep?" B'Elanna asked, her voice barely loud enough to carry over the natural sounds of the low-burning fire.
The barn floor allowed for a fire and the roof the barn, though not much protection from any kind of precipitation in its current state, wasn't a concern when they started the fire.
The sky didn't look like it threatened any storms. Daryl was only going off of his knowledge of the actual sky. He still wasn't certain how the programmable space above him functioned. Of course, it was easy to forget that this wasn't real. It was easy to forget that they hadn't used their supplies to make comfortable pallets in the part of the barn that was covered by the roof—just in case they needed to get as much protection as possible from some sort of suddenly appearing storm.
Daryl might have forgotten that he and Carol had been sucked into this almost impossible life in outer space, but sitting down by the fire and keeping watch with a half-Klingon reminded him of the truth.
"Yeah," Daryl said, settling down next to B'Elanna with a sigh. "She's out cold now. It took some convincing that I was gonna wake her up if anything happened, but she settled down finally and went out like a light."
B'Elanna gave him the slightest hint of a smile and nodded her head. The smile looked more like she was trying to figure out what she should say or do, instead of really looking like a genuinely meant facial expression.
"Tom didn't mind taking second watch," B'Elanna said.
"She don't mind the watch," Daryl said. "It ain't that at all. She'd take the whole night if we needed her to. And she'd rather be up early than stay up late. We've always worked good that way. It's just—she's got a lot on her mind."
"Is she OK?" B'Elanna asked.
"I think she's fine," Daryl said. "She's—I think she's OK. Just—you know—like the rest of us. This weren't exactly what we planned on. Not when we came in here for just a fun game and to give you two a chance to…" Daryl broke off and laughed quietly. He shook his head. "A chance to talk and spend time together, I guess."
"We got that," B'Elanna said. "This was the worst way it could happen, though."
"They'll pull us outta here soon," Daryl said.
"Is—your baby OK?" B'Elanna asked.
Daryl frowned at her because she was frowning at him. The stories and the lore—everything they told him about Klingons—were just stories about how they were overly emotional because they were always angry. Daryl saw a lot of emotions in B'Elanna, though, and they definitely weren't all anger.
He nodded his head.
"Yeah—yeah the baby's fine," Daryl assured her. "You got any reason to think it wouldn't be?"
"It's just—Carol didn't really eat at dinner," B'Elanna said. "And she seemed uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. I didn't know if it might be more than just the current situation, we're all in."
Daryl pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He kept his voice low.
"She lost her daughter," Daryl said. "To one of these things. Saw her torn up. Turned into one of 'em. This world? Really fucked with people. With their heads. You can't imagine half the shit we saw, and you wouldn't want to. She adopted two little girls. This world took them in a bad way—terrible. Gonna stay with Carol forever. This world messed with…messed with one of 'em's mind. Took 'em both. She adopted a son—and someone absolutely messed up in the head took his head. Right off his shoulders. Put it on a pike for Carol to see it. I had to pull it down. She never even got his body back to bury all of him…just the head I pulled off the fuckin' stick." He stopped a moment and tried to gauge what B'Elanna was thinking. He could see a great deal of emotion in her face. None of it, really, looked like anger at all. "When it was a game, and we were just playin' until we said stop? She was OK. Now? It's real again—and our baby's here. In all this shit where we thought he wouldn't never have to be. Everything she lost…everything that happened? It's been hard on Carol's mind."
"It would have to be," B'Elanna said, her voice barely more than a scratchy whisper. "Daryl…"
Daryl waited a moment. He gave her a moment to say whatever it was that she wanted or needed to say, but it seemed like she couldn't quite find the words. He didn't blame her for that.
"The only damn thing I really care about right now is gettin' outta this game," Daryl said. "Gettin' all of us outta this game, but…gettin' her outta here before it has a chance to hurt her in any way at all. I can already see it. Around the edges. I can see her remembering it all again, vividly. And I just wanna get her out of this game and back out there where—she can help Neelix cook or she can play assistant to Kathryn, or whatever it is she wants to do. I want her back out there where she was starting to think about our future and have some hope for it—for two or three happy little Dixons laughin' and runnin' Voyager's halls…out there—not in here where she's just thinkin' our baby's the next thing she's gotta lose."
"I'm sorry," B'Elanna said.
"They're empty words, but I appreciate the sentiment," Daryl said. He laughed quietly. "Had a friend that used to talk about the way that words just didn't really ever say what we wanted them to say. He's dead too. Got torn apart by one of these things. Guts ripped all out. He was dyin' slow. Horrible shit to see. I had to put him down."
"I'm sorry," B'Elanna said again, but she added to it quickly. "I'm sorry for—your loss. Your losses. All of them. I'm sorry for everything that Carol's lost. But, mostly? I'm sorry for bringing you back here, and for not checking the game well enough to know that this would happen. I don't understand the malfunction, and I'm sorry that I let you down like that."
Daryl offered her a reassuring smile and dropped an arm around her back to try to offer some comfort.
"Haven't had a whole lot of friends in my life, Klingon," he offered, "but—you're one of 'em. This weren't your fault. I helped program this, too."
"But I'm the Chief Engineer," B'Elanna said.
"And? They don't make mistakes? Or it's only Klingons that don't make mistakes?"
"We all do," B'Elanna said. "But I don't want my mistake to be...something that costs anyone so much."
"I don't wanna sit here and wallow," Daryl said. "Don't do neither one of us any good. Don't do anyone any good. This ain't nobody's fault. It didn't happen on purpose."
"Is that what you're going to tell Carol if—something happens?" B'Elanna asked. "She'll need someone to blame."
"Truth about that is—she'll blame herself before she blames either one of us," Daryl admitted. "But—we're not going to let that happen. You're going to help me, and we're not going to let anything happen."
"You're the optimistic one, now?" B'Elanna teased.
"One of us has to be," Daryl said. "Any minute now, Kathryn or Chakotay—or Tuvok. Hell…Harry…some damn body? They gonna snatch us right on outta here. They'll shut this thing down. But when they do, you gotta promise me one thing."
"What?" B'Elanna asked. There was a bit of bite in her question, but Daryl knew it was mostly owing to the fact that she felt scared and guilty.
"Promise me that you're finally going to stop bein' a pain in the ass and give Tom a chance. A real ass chance. Dinner and—a chance or two to fuck up. Because us human men? We do that shit."
B'Elanna eyed him in response. Really, the expression was response enough, and she seemed to know that, because she didn't say anything. She simply laughed to herself and shook her head before looking back at the little fire in front of them.
"You owe us that much," Daryl said. "After all—we wouldn't be here if it weren't for tryin' to get you two to do somethin' to get over this damn hump."
"That's not fair, Cowboy," B'Elanna said, half-teasing.
Daryl smiled.
"That's the price you pay for gettin' us stuck in hell, Klingon."
111
Kathryn laughed, and Chakotay was thankful, at least, that she was keeping her sense of humor firmly intact. Her laughter was almost musical.
"Oh—no—" she lamented dramatically. "It is way too early for this, and I know one little stowaway that is not happy."
Chakotay's chest squeezed. He felt sorry for her. She'd thrown up at least three times since she'd woken up, and the Walker that she'd just put down had done nothing but deprive her of what little bit of breakfast she'd managed to swallow and keep down until this point.
"Look on the bright side, Kathryn," Chakotay offered, "you'll soon be to the point that you can no longer throw up."
"You have an unusual sort of optimism," Kathryn teased, washing her mouth with a swallow of water from the canteen Chakotay offered in her direction. She spit the water on the ground and wiped her mouth, not at all worried about being lady-like for the moment.
They had made a make-shift camp in an opening. Chakotay had figured they could best defend it if they could see the approach of any Walkers from any direction. The only problem with their plan, of course, was that they could hardly see anything. They didn't dare to build a fire, so they ate what cold and ready rations they could, and they washed them down with water. They leaned against each other—back-to-back—so that they could better keep watch and keep each other out of the mud. The only real saving grace they'd had was that whoever programmed this certain chunk of the program had given them good weather and a starry sky that had provided them, at least, the light of a full moon by which to see their would-be assassins as they approached.
They had, in theory, taken turns sleeping, but Chakotay knew that he hadn't slept, and he doubted that Kathryn had, either. They'd stayed in their spot, assuming that there was safety in a danger that was already known, until the sun came up, and now they were wandering in the direction that their malfunctioning tricorders had last told them was the proper one for finding their missing people.
"I just wish we could get through to Tuvok or Harry," Kathryn said after a moment of studying the malfunctioning tricorder while they walked.
"They'll pull us all out as soon as they can," Chakotay said. "Or they'll stop the program as soon as they can access the power controls for this area of the ship."
"I'm concerned about finding everyone," Kathryn said. "But—a part of me can't help but believe that Tom and B'Elanna are probably in far better hands than they would be if they were with us. If anyone's capable of handling the aspects of this program, Chakotay, it's Carol and Daryl."
Chakotay hummed in agreement.
"I'm not terribly concerned about their survival against the photonic Walkers," Chakotay said. "I think they'll be able to handle it—at least if their portion of the program has been no more dangerous than ours. I do sense that you've got more on your mind, though, than your belief that they're going to survive without a problem."
Kathryn hummed, clearly chewing on her thoughts for a moment before she finally gave voice to them.
"The time advancement program," Kathryn said.
"What about it?" Chakotay pressed.
"Well, it's evident that the program has been equipped with one," Kathryn said. Chakotay hummed his agreement. "The time advancement programs sometimes cause re-acclimation issues in people."
"The same as adjusting to planets with different time cycles," Chakotay said, as a way of agreeing with her. "Which is why they're often used to help people prepare for certain missions."
"After their return, people often need time to get reacclimated again," Kathryn said. "And research has always come back somewhat divided on whether or not time advancement programs actually alter cell aging. In fact—it's always been widely believed that they do alter cell aging, just the same as staying on a planet with varying time cycles—but science has never been able to pinpoint exactly how much they alter cell aging, or exactly why. Or—for that matter, if the cell aging effect is only short-term or extends, really, to have more long-term effects."
"Science has never been able to pinpoint the 'who,' either, from what I recall," Chakotay said. "From what I remember, there are some people who show greater effects of the time alteration than others. Some hardly seem to show anything at all, and others seem to have a more dramatic reaction." Kathryn hummed, and Chakotay felt his stomach tighten. He was used to letting her work through problems and thoughts. That didn't mean, though, that it was always easy to wait for her to get to point that she was trying to reach in her own mind. "What are you thinking about, Kathryn?" Chakotay asked, finally.
"It's always been Starfleet protocol to keep expecting mothers away from missions involving time-variance whenever possible," Kathryn said. "Except in emergency situations. This certainly qualifies as an emergency, of course, but…the reason for that has always been that there have been no clear studies done on the effects of time advancement programs and time-cycle variance on developing fetuses."
"You're worried that something might happen to the baby?" Chakotay asked.
"Babies," Kathryn said. "If we're in here for—well, we don't know how long we'll be in here, Chakotay. We can't regulate our exposure like we could under normal circumstances."
"What are you concerned is going to happen?" Chakotay asked.
"That's the thing," Kathryn said. "I don't know. None of us really knows for sure."
Chakotay could sense her concern as he walked close enough to her to bump her if either of them swayed even slightly from a perfectly straight trajectory. He dropped a hand to her shoulder and tried to ignore his own uneasy feeling.
"Look at the bright side, Kathryn," Chakotay said, doing his best to lighten the mood as much as he possibly could. Being worried or overly preoccupied would neither be good for their health nor their focus as they navigated the landscape around them. "You'll be able to advance science's understanding of the effects of time advancement programs on the development of fetuses when we get out of this program."