A/N: You all truly overwhelmed me with your kind words and encouragements. I really had no idea anyone was still paying attention to this story. You are all too kind 3
I'm exploring another subplot in this chapter, the idea just slipped into my mind while I was writing the holodeck scene, and it wouldn't let go. The conflict was too interesting to explore. So I'm just going for it. I'm a chapter ahead every time I post one, and it's clear to me now where this is going. I think I'll add two or three more chapters after this one, and then the story is over! Thank you all for sticking with it! Hopefully these last few chapters won't disappoint.
Present day: Voyager – Holodeck one
4 hours since lockup – 20:00 hours
"This isn't the Doctor's program, is it?"
His hand momentarily halted its stirring, the water twirling in a whirlpool of freshly cut vegetables and tomato sauce. Oregano clustered together in the middle, hanging on for dear life, twirling. He stared, watched the swirl grow smaller and level out, then looked up.
"No," he admitted.
He'd noticed her eyes on him about an hour ago, when he'd moved about the shelter, took the pan and ladle, replicated the ingredients, mounted the pan above a makeshift campfire outside, and started cooking with such dexterity it surprised him it had taken her this long to even ask.
She sat down across from him.
"How –"
"Short answer?" he cut her off, a bit more abruptly than intended. But the thought of the Doctor having abused his trust flared up again, set his teeth on edge. He would be having a very strong word with the hologram the moment they got out of here.
"My best guess would be that he duplicated the file, reset certain parameters, and for whatever reason," he shrugged. "Here we are."
"You created it," a statement.
He nodded, resumed stirring, the soup almost done now.
"When?"
Not why.
He'd expected a why, but maybe that had been obvious enough.
"About an hour after we returned. Took me some weeks to perfect it," he admitted.
He watched her swallow hard, and look away. A type of desolate resignation had settled over her features ever since he'd found her by the river. The rather dated 20th century Kübler-Ross model came to mind; the five stages of grief. He ran through them, remembering clearly: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He briefly wondered at the accuracy of the theory, although at the moment it seemed to perfectly apply to Kathryn Janeway, either way.
"Eerie," she whispered, barely audible above the warm summer breeze. "It's exactly as I remember."
The sun was starting to set, their surroundings set aflame in soft hues of orange and red.
He smiled.
"That was the intention."
She looked back at him.
"I knew you were spending a significant amount of your free time on the holodeck, but I assumed…." She trailed.
He frowned.
"Spying on me now, captain?"
He watched her shift uncomfortably. Of course, he was well aware that all ship wide maintenance, status and holodeck reports crossed her desk on a daily basis. It wasn't exactly a breach of privacy when all departments reported to her. But the sheer fact that she had taken note of his behavior and whereabouts, when her entire demeanour had suggested otherwise, felt oddly validating.
"And you thought what, exactly?"
"Well," her discomfort grew more palpable.
"That I continued to knock boots with a holographic version of you?"
She snorted.
"I wouldn't exactly put it like that, but the thought crossed my mind, yes."
He smiled and reached for the two bowls next to the firepit, poured soup into them, and handed one to her.
"Careful, it's hot."
"Thank you."
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. His attention on his soup. He mindlessly pushed the vegetables around with his spoon, blowing, waiting for it to cool enough to eat.
"No," he finally said. "I didn't."
She lowered her own bowl, set it down beside her. Maybe it was still too hot, but he doubted that was the reason she hadn't taken a bite, yet.
"It was tempting," he acknowledged. "After I'd created the program, it would have been easy enough to put a version of you in it."
They locked eyes.
"But," he paused. "It wouldn't have been the same."
She held his gaze. A deep frown set in a crease between her brows. Seconds past, he didn't know what to make of her silence, or the expression that appeared on her face.
Another beat.
Then something cracked in her countenance.
She moved.
She moved with intend, giving him little time to put his own bowl aside afore she swiftly settled across his lap. Their eyes remained locked, reckless abandon now set in hers, and before he could so much as utter a word of surprise, her lips crashed down on his. Raw astonishment washed over him. He had half a mind not to question it, nor could he truly comprehend what had prompted her to suddenly abandon her rigid principles of weeks past. No. For the moment, he didn't care. His lips moved with hers, inhibited yearning liberated after weeks of denial; he let the waves of desire crash over him, relishing in the feel of it. He would not hold back, not anymore, not ever. A low moan crawled up his throat, pressed up against her mouth. She parted her lips beneath the vibration, and their tongues met, frantic with want. She sighed and swayed against him, intoxicated.
He had missed her so much.
So.
Much.
His body reacted, as it had always done, to the feel of her flush against him. She shifted. He groaned, then ground his growing desire flat against her lower belly, revealing just how much of an effect she still had on him. She gasped, moaned, but did not pull back. He wanted her so badly. Right here. Right now. One hand came up to frame her face, tangled in her hair; the other fumbled with the top button of her jumpsuit. Out. He needed her out of it. She seemed to understand, moved back slightly to accommodate him better.
"Torres to Janeway."
He fumbled with a second button.
"Torres to Janeway."
She broke away, he moved onto a third button, lips on her neck.
"Torres to Janeway!"
He froze.
Jolted backwards.
Their eyes locked.
She looked ravished. Her hair frizzy where his fingers had tangled through it, her lips a blistering red, cheeks ablaze, expression wild with longing. He felt himself pulse hard against her thigh, and in that moment some of the lust in her eyes ebbed away, her vision cleared. She turned from him as abruptly as she'd moved onto his lap.
"Janeway here."
Gathering some semblance of control he took a deep steadying breath, and forced his own attention elsewhere. His surroundings lethargically slipped back into focus, and with an abrupt start he took in the changes. New Earth had gone. The program had shut off. The hologrid empty, but for a big splash of soup on either side of them, no longer contained by its holographic bowls. The liquid languidly moved into the direction of the heavyset doors, now visible to the both of them.
"It's good to hear your voice, captain," his mind registered B'Elanna over the com, the engineer's tone tinged with something he could not quite place. "Are you and the commander alright?"
"Yes," he heard Kathryn say. A hint of a quiver tangled with the dark timbre of her voice.
B'Elanna continued, seemingly oblivious to the captain's curtness.
"We've been working for hours to get you two out of the Doctor's simulation. We don't quite know what just happened, but the program seemed to have shut itself off. We had no success on our end. I'm guessing you found a solution?"
Kathryn chanced a glance at him, her cheeks flushed with shame.
"We seemed to have triggered a solution," Chakotay stepped in. "How's the Doctor?"
"Not great," B'Elanna replied. "Harry's been running intermittent diagnostics on his program. He seems to be malfunctioning. We dug a little deeper and found evidence his ethical subroutines might have infused themselves with a set of dichotomizing subroutines that belong to a holographic version of Ernst Rüdin, an apparent Nazi psychiatrist from Earth's Second World War. It must have slipped past when I downloaded some of the newer subroutines into his program last week. It's been giving us quite the headache. Over the past couple of hours, he's further deteriorated," she paused and he could hear her take a deep defeated sigh before continuing. "He's been spewing nothing but German nonsense. We'll probably be working on restoring him to his default settings for the rest of the night."
"We'll let you get back to it, then."
"Yes…" she hesitated.
There was more.
"B'Elanna?"
"Never mind," she said. "We'll keep you apprised. Torres out."
=/\=
Present day: Voyager – Sickbay
"How many people saw that?!" Harry exclaimed.
B'Elanna rubbed her hands over her face. This day was definitely not turning out the way she'd expected, and with what she'd experienced of life on Voyager so far, that was saying a lot.
"I don't know," she replied. "Maybe half a dozen or so, depending on who was paying attention when it appeared on screen."
"We fed the feed through to engineering and the bridge."
"Alright, maybe a dozen," she conceded.
It didn't matter, the entire crew would know before the next duty shift rotation.
"This is bad," Harry mumbled, his eyes all but popping out of his skull. "This is really bad."
She quietly tapped the screen, turning her attention back to browsing through the Doctor's subroutines, extracting and deleting all of the debilitating bits and pieces that had entwined themselves around his original programming. She really didn't want to think about it. At least they'd managed to turn it off before it had gotten really heated. Also, thank Kahless, that she'd deactivated the Doctor before the holodeck's feed flashed into view. She wasn't sure how smugly he would have responded to that bit of information in his current state. Damnit, why hadn't she turned the feed off when she noticed it didn't work in the first place?
This was all her fault.
All of it.
Fuck.
"How are you not as shocked as I am?"
She briefly halted her motions, her fingers hovering above the console for only a millisecond before they resumed their work.
"It was just a kiss, Harry."
"Just a–?"
She feared his eyes would truly pop out of his skull, the expression on his face almost feral.
"B'Elanna, were you at all looking at the same thing as I was? This is going to be all over the ship within hours!" He started pacing "And it's all our fault! We fed the feed through, we–"
"Look," she whirled on him. "We didn't know! We didn't know the feed would turn on the moment the holodeck shut off. It wasn't working before; we didn't expect it would then! We didn't know!"
Harry heavily dropped down in the Doctor's chair, head in hands.
"What are we going to do?" he looked up. "Why didn't you tell them? Who's going to tell them now?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," she rammed her fist into the console.
"Torres to Chakotay and Janeway, please report to sickbay."
=/\=
Present day:Voyager - Sickbay
She felt ill.
A slight ringing had started in her left ear.
Her throat dry as sandpaper.
A pounding the size of a fist beat behind her eyes.
This was not happening.
"We… Look… Harry and I…We tried," B'Elanna spluttered.
She held up a hand, her lips set in a thin hard line.
"Who else has seen this?"
"We're not sure," Harry supplied, his face drained of all color.
He looked exactly how she felt.
"And the feed?"
"We cut it off the moment it started broadcasting, but…" B'Elanna trailed. "It showed–"
Kathryn nodded.
"I know enough."
She turned her attention to Chakotay, he'd been quietly standing a few paces behind her ever since B'Elanna had explained the situation to them, showed the feed. Even if the bridge and engineering crew had only caught a couple of seconds…
She mentally shook the thought from her mind.
They'd looked starved with want.
Frantic.
Raw.
And more than just their own set of eyes had been witness to that.
All of that.
She couldn't remember a time in her life she had ever been so absolutely, thoroughly and utterly mortified.
"Commander?"
Dazed he looked up, nodded, and stepped forward.
"Thank you for informing us. B'Elanna. Harry," he gave them both a curt nod. "I think the captain and I can take it from here. You two focus on getting the Doctor back into working order."
"Chakotay, I…" the guilt on the young engineer's face was so genuine and profound, it seemed crude to actually blame her and Harry for any of this. "I'm so sorry."
=/\=
Present day: Voyager – Captain's Ready Room
Moments later
"Coffee," she barked. "Black."
"We should talk," his voice cracked, defeated.
She shook her head, disbelief turned to shock.
"I don't even know where to start."
"I'll keep this brief, then," he said.
She walked towards the couch, her back to him, looking out the viewport, holding onto her coffee mug like a crutch. The only thing that still held any semblance of consistency, normalcy. Her mind couldn't even comprehend what had just transpired, what the consequences would be.
"I love you," he said.
And then there was him.
She closed her eyes.
"I want to be with you," he continued. "I don't care who knows."
She turned around slowly, placed the mug on the table, and gently lowered herself onto the couch. He remained where he stood, watching, gauging, bracing himself for a response in the negative.
They'd been here before. The scientist in her had long since evaluated her choices, shifted through the data, analyzed the outcome, which had been so disastrous it was the whole reason they now found themselves exposed, stripped bare. Naked for all to see.
She couldn't make the same decision again and expect a different outcome. Not when what she kept trying to pass for the truth was a lie. They would simply end up here again and again until they'd destroyed each other so thoroughly, nothing would be left
Initially, she'd convinced herself that she could pull it off, and maybe she could have. Maybe, if he had been a lower deck crewman, without any significant rank, she could have avoided him for years, even if Voyager had been the size of a shoebox.
But not her second in command.
Not the person who always stood next to, in front of or behind her.
Within reach.
Always right there.
So close.
She looked up.
"I need time."
=/\=
A/N: I so much enjoy writing from B'Elanna's point of view. She's such a fun character to write! I hope you enjoyed that scene as much as I loved writing it! Hopefully, I will see you in the next chapter ;)
