Chapter 10

B'Elanna waited until everyone had gone to the mess hall for dinner – rumor had it there was a barrel of bloodwine on board – and then made her way to Tom's cabin. As she stood outside his door, her finger on the control for the door lock, she contemplated what she was really doing. Her mind echoed the same refrain it had been singing for the past few days: he's not Tom, he's not Tom. And yet she still felt compelled.

Tom looked stunned when she walked in, and rightly so. It would have been more appropriate to have the guards bring him to her chamber if she wanted to see him. She entered the room, consciously trying to look casual, as he watched her in silence.

"Sit down," she suggested gently. After a moment she sat beside him, and it wasn't hard to notice how he stiffened at her presence. "Tom, what have you heard about me?"

"Uhh…"

"It's okay, really. You can be honest with me."

"Chakotay said that you're half-Terran because your mother forced your father to have sex with her."

"Oh."

"Not that I think it's your fault, Sub-regent," he quickly amended.

"I'm not the sub-regent, Tom," she confessed quickly, without thinking.

"What?" Tom looked at her in surprise. As she looked into his eyes, B'Elanna wanted to believe she could confide in him, and the whole story came gushing out in one long breath.

"I'm not from here. I was asked to take over for the B'Elanna of this universe. My parents – they were married. They loved each other. Well, at least for a little while. It's not unheard of where I come from for someone to get involved with a person from a different species."

"Like you and me?" he interrupted knowingly. "There must be a reason why you came here tonight."

B'Elanna silently agreed but wasn't sure she could identify what it was. She held his gaze and hoped she would find the answer. After a moment, Tom lowered his eyes to his lap.

"Are you going to force me?"

The question came out quietly, a plea that she would say no. "Tom, no," she whispered, reflexively placing a hand on his knee.

He flinched.

"I'm sorry." She withdrew her hand. "I didn't mean – I wasn't…" She licked her lips. "In my universe you and I – we're…we're close."

"A Klingon and a Terran?"

"Yes," B'Elanna assured him with a nod. "Klingons, Vulcans, Terrans, Bajorans, Bolians. We all live and work on the same ship. It's called Voyager."

Tom relaxed slightly. "It sounds like the vision that guy had."

"Which guy?" she asked with mild curiosity.

"Um, he wasn't the ringleader, but he looked exactly like him." Tom thought for a moment, and B'Elanna hoped he would say the one name she most wanted to hear. "The blonde called him…H2…Half a Harry."

"Harry? You met Harry at the camp? What happened to him?"

"He's from your ship, isn't he?" Tom realized. "He told me he and I were friends in your universe. He escaped when the rebels attacked. He tried to help me."

"What happened?"

Tom stared at his hands in his lap. "I told him to go without me and gave myself up to the Cardassians."

The way he confessed to her was so familiar – like Tom trading confidences with her in the darkness of his quarters late at night. "You gave yourself up so they could get away?" she finished.

"No," he clarified. "Sub-regent –"

"B'Elanna."

"I'm not the Tom you and Harry know, okay? I didn't do anything brave. I saw the guards, and I got scared. I was scared of what might have happened if I had gone with the rebels. I don't think I'm cut out to live on the run like that."

His voice was sad, as if he felt burdened by his own lack of self-worth, as if he knew he was disappointing her but unable to do anything about it. She knew then he was not her Tom. Her Tom would never have willingly missed a chance to get away just because he was frightened. But something about this Tom's confession – the trust he placed in her, the way he needed her to understand what had really happened and not think him braver than he really was – made him endearing.

B'Elanna leaned toward him and placed a tender kiss on his cheek. Then she moved back to gauge his reaction. He was staring at her in surprise, but he didn't look afraid of her anymore. "I'm going to need your help," she said, circumventing any explanation of her actions and sparing him further torture of confession. "Will you help me look for Harry?"

"I don't know where the rebels were going," he warned. "I really don't know anything about them at all."

B'Elanna frowned. "Did you hear them say anything at all? Anything about a base or their next mission?"

Tom shook his head. "I'm really sorry."

B'Elanna rose and placed her hands on her hips. Maybe we can ask Chakotay, she thought. Thus far, he hadn't been cooperative, even when she and Gowron had attempted in veiled hints to indicate it was safe to trust them. If Tom had information, it would make everything much simpler. "Come with me," she said after a moment.

She led him down through the empty corridors of the ship to her ready room, where she pulled up a star chart of the surrounding sector. "Look carefully," she prompted. "Does anything ring a bell?"

Tom studied the chart for a minute with a thoughtful expression on his face. "The Betreka Nebula. There's something about that name."

"Apparently it's a popular place." She nearly activated the comm – until she remembered that Tom was still in the room. Damar and Gowron, she knew, would scold her if they saw him there. The guards would be easier; she could tell them she was trying to extract information from him – which, really, she was. "I'm going to have one of the guards escort you back to your room now, okay?"

"Is everything all right?" he asked with some nervousness.

"It's fine. You were really helpful." She gave him a reassuring smile. "Now I just need you to promise me that you'll pretend to be loyal in front of the Alliance soldiers. Can you do that?"

Tom smirked wryly. "Be obedient? That I can do."

"Don't hate yourself," she urged. Part of her felt tenderly toward him in spite of disapproving his complicity. It's not his fault. He doesn't know any better. Her own counterpart, after all, participated in the very system that excluded her. If I grew up here, I'd probably be the same – no, I wouldn't. I'd be the head of the Terran Rebellion by now. She was mildly relieved to know that part of Chakotay existed in this universe, too.

"I didn't expect you to be kind to me."

"I'm not being kind, Tom. I'm just…it's just how people are supposed to be treated."

"We have a big problem," B'Elanna explained to Gowron and Damar as they entered her ready room. She could tell by their red-rimmed eyes that the rumor about the bloodwine had been accurate. She hoped it wouldn't interfere with their ability to offer counsel. "I found out where Harry Kim is, but if we go after him, we'll be leading the Alliance right to the rebels."

"Then you'll have to continue the mission without him," Damar said immediately.

She glared, but it was Gowron who spoke, haranguing Damar for not even considering what B'Elanna was saying. She could see how their relationship worked, how they played off each other's strengths and weaknesses, and she was grateful that, on this one particular issue at least, Gowron was on her side. He would not let Damar summarily dismiss any chances of finding Harry.

They continued to debate the pros and cons of leading the ship into the nebula to find the rebel base. Although their ship was under the control of the Obsidian Order, which was sympathetic to the Terran Rebellion, not all the crew members knew that, and someone could turn over the information about the base whereabouts to the Alliance. In the end, however, they decided to go. It would provide them cover to make preparations for the strike against Martok. Meeting with the rebels would also give Damar a chance to determine if they could be trusted to enter a partnership without betraying the ship to the Alliance. And B'Elanna would be reunited with her crewmate.

"So you actually stole his clothes while he was bathing?" B'Elanna repeated with wide eyes.

"I didn't do it," Tom reiterated. "My sister did. I would never steal from a Klingon!" They shared a laugh. "She couldn't help it. They'd taken away everything we had, and I really needed a pair of pants."

"What did he do when he finished swimming?"

"My other sister said she saw him walking back to camp naked. I was so nervous that I was going to get caught wearing those pants that I made them use hela berries to dye the fabric."

They laughed again. It turned out that this Tom had as many interesting stories about his adolescence as her Tom. It felt good to listen to them, away from the impending plans to betray the Terran rebels, away from Damar and Gowron – to just be for a while.

They were lounging on his tiny bed, half-sitting, half-reclining.

"You really shouldn't keep coming here."

"I made sure no one saw." She didn't want to say it aloud to Tom, but she suspected that, if the crew saw her entering his room, they would just assume an affinity for Terrans ran in her family.

She held up the pitcher of bloodwine – she was beginning to acquire a taste for it – and refilled their glasses. Is this number two or number three? She had no idea how long they'd been talking.

"When I was little," she confessed with a smile, "I used to get in trouble with my teachers every day. There was this one, Miss Johnston, who was the kind of person who always carried around a stack of padds and consulted them for everything. Getting groceries, teaching class – she even made notes about what we did at recess. She made it her life's work to give me a hard time, too, and she never believed me when I told her the other kids were picking on me."

"The kids picked on you?"

B'Elanna was still smiling, though they were heading into dangerous territory. "Because I was half-Klingon. They were all fully human."

Tom nodded in response, though she knew he couldn't really fathom a world in which being Klingon was a detriment. "So what did you do to her?" he prompted, trying to restore the light mood.

"Well, one day, when everyone was at recess, I took her padds. When we came back to class, Miss Johnston started looking everywhere for them. She had us turn the room upside down trying to find them. She had absolutely no idea what to do with us. We spent the rest of the day playing games because she couldn't even think of what to teach without the damn lesson plans."

Tom smiled, but there was some other thought in his eyes. "What?" she pressed.

"I wish I'd known you then," he said softly.

Time stood still. They were the same words her Tom had said, not too long ago, words that she could tell he, like this Tom, truly meant. Words that made her believe she didn't have to spend her life under the protective covering of anger. "Why?"

"You'd have inspired me," he explained. "I wouldn't be such a…so content to be second-class. You'd have made me want more for my life."

"Are you sure it's too late?" Their heads had come dangerously close, and B'Elanna's body began acting apart from her brain. She leaned up slightly, drinking in the sight of his face mere centimeters from hers. Their lips met and pressed together tentatively at first, then parted as the kiss deepened.

He kisses like Tom.

He's not Tom.

This is a bad idea, B'Elanna.

She pulled away, somewhat reluctantly, but leaned her forehead against his as she caught her breath. She understood now the reason why she had come to his cabin, and she knew it was wrong. "I should get back to the bridge," she said quietly, setting her bloodwine on the table. "They'll be expecting me."