Dinner Tonight?
by, Camilla Faye Montgomery
Chapter II Death, Discovery, and Duty
Hi! Remember me? Kate, the girl who used to write, some time far in the past? Anyway, I stumbled upon this just now as I was going through my stories. I wrote it a few months ago but didn't think it was worth posting. Reading it now, it doesn't seem as bad as it did then, so here it is, the long awaited (by me, anyway) next chapter.
Rating: G
Summary: Guess what, Icheb isn't dead. But perhaps he wishes he was.
Disclaimer: I don't own Voyager. Oh well.
They walked down the corridor. It wasn't really walking. She felt that rather, she was gliding past and through doorways the same way a train glides on a track, passing trees and buildings and people and the world. Speeding through and around and between life, but not experiencing it. Was she alive? She didn't know, couldn't tell. Strange how the world just doesn't seem to be the world and life doesn't seem to be life, when...She didn't want to think about it.
There was a job to be done, and she was the one to do it. Oh, she wasn't going to swoop onto the bridge and take control, or perform some amazing and inspired and vital function. That wouldn't make sense. She was just going to do what she was told, improvise if necessary. Sure, on a starship there are almost by definition heros, brilliant officers who save the world or the universe weekly, or so it seems. But it takes a starship crew to keep a starship hanging, as if by an invisable string, among the heavans. And she was a part of that crew. So she'd do what she had to.
She knew, knew he'd only been trying to protect her, but Naomi felt a wave of resentment pass over her. Clark knew Icheb's history, knew that to him-and to her, assimilation was a fate worse infinitly worse than mere death. So he had given her a gift, tried to hide the horrifying truth from her. How dare he? What right had he to keep that from her? She deserved to know everything about him and his end as an individual, whether by death or by the Collective. That knowledge belonged to her, he and everything about him belonged to her, and she to him.
Whoa....where did that come from? She searched her mind for the genesis of that thought. How, exactly did she reach that particular conclusion? Never mind. No time to think, to even breathe now. All that mattered was Icheb wasn't dead. They didn't even know for sure that he'd been assimilated. All they knew was that his shuttle had been tractored into the green gaping mouth of a Borg sphere. He wasn't dead, he could still be saved, and they were going to go save him.
She loved Clark like a brother, but my he could be dense sometimes. How exactly did he plan to keep her from finding out about Icheb's probable assimilation, while the whole crew prepared for the rescue mission?