Episode Two - Point of Reference
Chapter 3
Anticipated Difficulties
Thomas pressed his fingers into his forehead, waiting. B'Elanna was looking shamefully at her hands, and rightfully so. "You've turned this into a pretty lousy day for me, Torres," he mumbled.
"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?" she snapped.
"Oh," Thomas laughed, trying to put every ounce of his irritation and disdain into his glare. "At least once more."
Finally, the door behind them slid open, and Tuvok walked into his office, followed by Chief Paswan and Captain Chakotay. All five of them nodded greetings while Paswan tucked himself into the corner. Tuvok took his seat on his side of the desk, and Chakotay leaned on it without making eye-contact with either Thomas or B'Elanna.
"Thanks for meeting us," Thomas said.
"Indeed." Tuvok looked at B'Elanna. "I am gratified to know that Miss Torres has elected to acknowledge her misstep." He nodded to Chief Paswan, and added, "Though your references are few and not entirely positive, your actions after the fact have convinced me of your inclination toward restoration."
"Can I say something?" she asked, and Thomas shot her a glance. He was trying to help, and she seemed intent on making it so that even Thomas never wanted to see her again.
Thomas wondered if there was some kind of sedative he could have given her that made her look conscious but somehow unable to physically react to anything anybody said. No shot of that ever happening.
Tuvok inclined his head in an inviting gesture. "Please."
"I admit I may have overreacted." After looking around the room at the eyes on her, she added, "Punching Ensign Vorik in the face, in case anyone isn't up to speed here. I didn't mean to hurt him, and I thought… well, he got a little too close and I overreacted."
"As you said," Tuvok said.
"Yeah." B'Elanna took a deep breath. "But I'm not really interested in any restoration."
Tuvok straightened in his seat and looked about to speak, but caught himself when Chakotay turned toward her.
"Well, that's too bad," he said, folding his hands over his ankle, resting atop his knee. "Because that's what you're going to do. You're going to apologize—"
"Apologize?" B'Elanna nearly exploded, and Thomas pressed his fingers into his forehead again. Why did their only genius engineer have to be such an idiot?
"Apologize personally," Chakotay said, as if a revision. "Over a hot cup of pejuta. Bond with the man. And you're going to do it today."
"I'm not going to bond with him," B'Elanna snapped, and glanced at Thomas. "Riker—?"
Thomas raised his hands. "Don't look at me. I was going to try to plead down from getting put off the ship to just spending the next seventy-five years locked in your quarters before you opened your mouth."
B'Elanna sneered. "I don't find your twisted sense of humor very funny."
Chakotay, on the other hand, seemed to find it hilarious. He grinned, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he showed his white teeth. "You're welcome to collect your things and get settled on Ilidaria. Neelix says they're mostly friendly, and who knows? You might even find work doing whatever it is you do best." He hesitated to let his next words sink in. "Because I'm pretty sure it's not being in a starship engine room. At least not mine."
B'Elanna huffed, blinking at tears of rage and probably surprise.
Even Thomas couldn't believe Chakotay was making good on his threat.
Of course, he had to…
"Tuvok, though…" Chakotay sighed, slapping the Vulcan with a friendly and open palm on the shoulder. "Tuvok doesn't think it's necessary. You confessed when you didn't have to, and he thinks that introduces a mitigating circumstance. But me, I think it's too easy. What do you think, Thomas?"
Thomas stared at Chakotay, then directed his gaze to Tuvok. Of course, the Vulcan was unreadable. He wanted to ask for a moment to think—think about what precedent he wanted to be setting even as Chakotay was obviously thinking the same thing.
B'Elanna was looking at him, and he couldn't read her, either.
With a sigh, he muttered, "A real fucking lousy day, Torres…" He raised his eyes and looked at Chakotay. "You were pretty clear the penalties for assault. We can't have people at each other when there's threats we don't even know about ahead of us," Thomas said, and heard B'Elanna's breathing change ever so slightly even if her stone-cold expression didn't. "But I have to give Torres credit where it's due."
"If I may, Captain?" Tuvok said.
"Please."
Tuvok turned to B'Elanna, folding his hands on the desk before him. "Following Lieutenant Riker's report that you had confessed, I spoke with Ensign Vorik. He has accepted fault in the altercation, and requested that your role in the incident be overlooked. I believe his assessment of the situation is generous, but I believe some leniency may be due."
B'Elanna's expression cycled from rage to shock to confusion followed by a blank stare.
"I believe the formal and personal apology suggested by the captain, in addition to close supervision by one of the senior officers at all times, will suffice. Do you concur, Captain?" Tuvok turned his eyes up to Chakotay, who nodded.
"Consider this a warning, Torres. It's the only one you're going to get." With that, Chakotay waved her away as he redirected his gaze toward the wall. As if she wasn't worth a second more of his time. "Get out of here."
Torres rose and Thomas wondered if she was going to argue. He wouldn't have put it past her. She looked from Chakotay to Tuvok and let her gaze linger on Thomas before opening that damned mouth of hers—maybe for the last time.
"Look," she said, her small voice reinforced with an inkling of defiance. "I dropped out of the Academy for a reason, and I was sorry I ever had anything to do with Starfleet then. I'll be damned if I have to now."
Thomas glared at her, but she was no longer looking at him. Good thing, too.
Chakotay whirled, quickly enough to catch B'Elanna off guard and startle her into the wall behind her. "Are you asking to be put off the ship, Torres? Because we can make that happen in twenty minutes or less."
Thomas stood up, putting himself between B'Elanna and Chakotay before either of them could make any decisions all of them would regret—and slammed his open palm into the wall right next to her head. "I've heard enough!"
"But, Thom—!"
Every shred of his Academy training rebelled, every ounce of Human etiquette fought, but there was only one language B'Elanna Torres understood. He was bigger than she was, taller, but certainly not stronger… which meant he had to keep surprise on his side.
Thomas lashed out, knocking her back into the wall.
Reeling in shock and coughing from the impact, B'Elanna sprang as he moved in to press her to the wall. Her fist landed on his left, lower ribs, and he stumbled. Didn't miss her shoulders, her neck, and pulled her up the wall so her toes just touched the floor. He noticed distantly that Tuvok had risen from his seat and Paswan had even taken a step closer despite the obvious disparity in martial ability.
"Thomas!" She wheezed, rage replaced with surprise and clear offense.
"You don't want to do things the Starfleet way, Torres?" Thomas barked, and pushed away from her. He didn't bend over his sore waist, but didn't stand much straighter either. "We can do things the Maquis way if you want. Which is it?"
The silence was long, and only Chakotay, surprisingly, seemed relatively uninterested. Tuvok looked like he was about to dive over the table at any second to restrain one of them, and even Thomas couldn't guess which.
"You're fucking crazy," B'Elanna spat, hands balled in shaking fists.
"Lieutenant…" Tuvok cautioned.
Thomas waved away his attempts to be reasonable. "And you're fucking lucky there's a planet close enough to catch you when you're tossed off the ship." Convinced that she'd put off any idea of testing her strength against the four of them in this room, Thomas leaned back in, his hand on the wall beside her head. "If you're not sleeping, then you're working. If you are sleeping, you're confined to quarters. Your replicator rations are restricted, and I'll make sure you have only the most select assignments—and anyone who wants to show you pity can join you. It's up to you. Which way do you want to do this? Maquis or Starfleet?"
He might have to tell Seska the same thing: reminder her traitors and mutineers were thrown into airlocks and ejected, most of the time without due process. Other options included public beatings and exhibitions of humiliation that would probably work really well on B'Elanna in particular—assuming they could figure out how to get at her in a fight without her killing someone else.
"I trust you know you will not be allowed to murder Miss Torres." Tuvok's tone was even and authoritative—it made the absurdity even more comical, but Thomas was too angry for that.
"I trust you know you can't always be everywhere." Thomas glared at Tuvok over his shoulder, hoping that for once in his life the Vulcan picked up a hint.
Tuvok considered, and didn't arrive at the conclusion Thomas was internally begging him to see. "This is truth. However, assault carried out by Miss Torres is to be tolerated no more than the same actions by you. I must place you both under arrest."
Chakotay's sigh was tired, but his eyes still sparked that same amused warning. "Can we put off filling up the brig three days into this trip and just assume that any actions and threats taken by either party in this room were just demonstrations?" He looked first to Thomas, because he could take a hint, and then Torres. "Right, Torres?"
B'Elanna glanced at Thomas for a second before looking back at Chakotay and dropping her gaze in apparent deference. "Yeah. Won't happen again."
"You know what I want to hear, Torres," Chakotay said. "Now, I'll invite you again to, please, get the hell out of Tuvok's office and don't come back."
B'Elanna left without another word.
"Captain." Tuvok's sigh was nearly plaintive.
"She could have killed me, Tuvok, and you know it," Thomas muttered, slumping back in his chair. He rubbed his hand on his chest softly where she'd hit him and winced. "I don't think she broke anything," he said and repressed a grunt of pain. "Damn."
"One's ability to defend against violence is not in question," Tuvok said, and, not nearly for the first time, Thomas agreed. "We cannot induce correct action by threat of corporal punishment."
Thomas scoffed. "That wasn't a threat. She wants to fight."
"Are you suggesting that Ensign Vorik challenge Miss Torres to a duel?" Tuvok arched an eyebrow, his tone dry.
With a sigh, Thomas shrugged. He almost wished it were that simple. "As fun as that might be, no. We obviously have to figure out something else. In the meantime, what would you suggest my corporal punishment be?" He glanced at Chakotay, then. "Unless you want to put me off the ship, too. We can't just chalk that up to Maquis housekeeping."
"We can't lose B'Elanna," Paswan said suddenly, and Thomas had almost forgotten the slight engineer had been there the whole time. "Her skills are too important to getting us home, even if she is as cuddly as a skunk."
"To put Miss Torres off the Defiant would be illogical," Tuvok agreed. "Clearly, we must amend our incentives. Perhaps the additional supervision will be beneficial for her conduct."
"The question is who," Paswan said, and looked at each of them in turn. "And I assume it falls to me to decide who that will be." He sighed and nodded, as if the extra work were all but inevitable. Nobody offered him any suggestions, maybe because they didn't have any. Vorik was clearly out of the question, and Thomas wasn't sure Torres had been supervised at all since she left the Academy.
"We showed Torres leniency for the first time—we'll do the same for you." Chakotay shrugged like that was all that needed to be said on the matter. "Just… apologize to her."
Thomas smiled, sure that would undermine everything he'd just done and sure Chakotay knew that. But the look Chakotay was giving him right now seemed to say it was only for Tuvok's benefit that he'd suggested a reciprocal punishment at all.
Thomas folded his hands, then, and nodded. "Yeah. Sure. Over a hot cup of pejuta."
#
Ha'kan all but jumped off his bunk reflexively.
It was nothing… his roommate tossed and whimpered in his sleep in the bunk below.
Again.
With a sigh, Ha'kan put his fingers through his hair and watched. Libby had come up more than once, and Ha'kan assumed it was a name. Though, maybe not. It barely sounded like a word.
Kind of pitiable—like a little kid, though he and Ensign Kim had to be about the same age, twenty-two. He didn't wonder that the nightmares were a new thing for him. He looked like he hadn't had a bad day in his life. But something about him reminded Ha'kan of his brother. Maybe it was the innocent brown eyes or the black hair, because they didn't look anything else alike.
Rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes, he knelt beside the bed and shook Ensign Kim's shoulder. "Hey, Ensign."
The Human jerked away, confused and scared—and then embarrassed.
"It's okay; come on… Computer, lights, low." Ha'kan pulled on his arm, showing him to the single chair at the table as he tapped the replicator in the wall. "Sit down."
Ensign Kim did as he was told, covering his eyes. "Sorry," he whimpered, shivering. "Sorry for waking you."
"No big deal. Computer, chamomile tea, fifty-seven degrees," he said, and a white teacup appeared in the receptacle. His third day away from the hospital after the occupation was over, he was still dusted in ash and didn't know what to do or where to go. A Human relief worker at a refugee resources center had given him a cup of chamomile tea. He'd liked it, and he assumed all Humans did, too, even though he knew that must not be true. Not every Bajoran liked hasperat.
Just because he'd never met one that didn't like hasperat didn't mean that wasn't true.
Ha'kan took Ensign Kim's hand and pressed the cup into it. His hands were shaking like he was sick and weak still. Ha'kan didn't think the doting Doctor Bashir would have overlooked that, but… he apparently didn't even trust apparently-friendly Federation-programmed doctors.
Ensign Kim looked up at him, still extremely confused, and probably rightly so. Also a little angry and definitely embarrassed. Also… rightly so.
Ha'kan was probably treating him like a kid. Force of habit. He wasn't going to apologize. He'd promised his brother he'd wake him up if he had nightmares.
"Look…" Ha'kan sighed. "We were captured by aliens and had genetic experiments performed on us. For you, that was almost deadly. If that wasn't enough, we're seventy years away from everything we've ever known." Ha'kan ordered a second cup, leaned back in front of the replicator and slid down to the floor. There was only one chair in here. "It makes sense to be… a little disturbed." He hoped Kim didn't ask him why he wasn't disturbed.
Ensign Kim looked into his cup for a second, his other hand rubbing his stomach. Ha'kan remembered being stabbed with a giant needle right about there. "Thanks," he said, and took a sip.
"Want to talk about it?"
He shook his head.
Ha'kan didn't expect him to say yes. Ha'kan had never talked about it. "Where are you from?" Ha'kan said, since he wasn't going to start now. That was a nightmare he'd finally stopped having.
Kim stared for a moment. "Earth?"
"Yeah, where? Tell me about it." Not that Ha'kan would know anything about Earth geography. He was at least assured Kim wouldn't know Bajor's either, so he didn't feel bad.
"South Carolina," he said, and Ha'kan nodded encouragingly even though he had no idea what that was. "A little town called Myrtle Beach." He wiped at his eyes and took a breath after a drink of tea. "Lived just five minutes' walk away from the ocean. White sand, salt air."
Ha'kan smiled and downed his tea. "Sounds great."
"Yeah, um," he said, and sniffed. "It is."
Right. He was probably fragile about that, too. Ha'kan forgot some people—probably even most people—had a nice place to go home to. Meanwhile, Ha'kan had been so deeply damaged by the Cardassians, he wasn't sure he could answer where he was from at all.
"What about you?" Kim asked quickly, once he finished rubbing his eyes.
"A little town in Lonar province," he said, and shoved away the last memory he had of the place. His entire family had been dragged out of their beds during an outbreak of some fever Ha'kan never knew. They were sent to the hospital, and only one of them was left. "It's one of the more mountainous regions, known for ranching. We had these, uh…" He gestured with his hands the size of the little bovid creature with sharp hooked claws flanking its front hooves and a spiked mane down its spine. "They're called wahran. Little goat-things, domesticated for their milk and hair. My father gave me one to care for when I was six."
Kim smiled because he didn't know the rest of the story.
"That's an ops division uniform you wear, right?" he hurried to ask, even though he knew.
He nodded again, casting a glance toward the drawer in the wall where he'd folded the yellow-and-black shirt. "Yeah. I always wanted to be the ops officer on the bridge of a starship."
Ha'kan had never wanted to be anything. "Chakotay and Tuvok offered field commissions to the Maquis crew," he said. "I wonder if I'd end up in ops if I took them up on it."
"Are you thinking about it?" Ensign Kim sounded almost hopeful.
Kinda nice of him, Ha'kan thought, for some reason. "I, uh… yeah, I'm thinking about it." Technically speaking, he'd brought it up and was currently thinking about it because it was the topic of conversation. He didn't know if he was seriously considering accepting the offer, though. "Though I nearly blew my face off a few hours ago following simple instructions, so who the hell knows?"
Kim seemed to be trying to suppress a smile. "What'd you do?"
Make stupid mistakes. Which, to be fair, he usually wasn't the one making those. "I'm usually really good at following instructions, but I misaligned some relay and apparently those things are pickier than a newly-promoted gul." Vorik had been pretty nice about it, though—and incredibly thorough in his explanation, about three-quarters of which Ha'kan didn't understand.
"You haven't ever done starship ops, though, right?"
"That obvious?"
With a shrug, Kim looked back at the cup warming his fingers. "No, just it just seems expected to make mistakes your first few days. Blowing stuff up every now and again seems like a rite of passage in engineering. Just, usually, guys get that part done at the Academy."
It was nice to know Kim thought poor performance was in some way normal…? Not exactly the kind of thing he expected from an Academy graduate. "So you think I should pick up a field commission."
"I think you'd learn a lot," Kim said.
Ha'kan grinned. "I expected a bit more of a glowing endorsement."
Kim smiled a little, shrugged. "I don't know you well enough. I don't know what you want. We're gonna be out here a long time, but I heard Lieutenant Tuvok is overseeing the commissions and even teaching some courses you'd get at the Academy as part of the requirement. That… doesn't seem like a good time no matter how bored you get."
"You know?" Ha'kan chuckled. "You're alright, Ensign."
Kim forced a chuckle and shook his head as he took another drink of tea. "Call me Harry."
Ha'kan didn't know why he hadn't expected that. He'd never been called by his given name by anyone other than… well, his family, actually. Full name by everyone he hated, and family name by friends. By then, he was the only Tabor left, so that it may as well have been his given name.
Maybe it wasn't as significant a pass for Humans. Still, he offered, "You can call me Ha'kan."
Ensign Harry Kim examined his tea for a long while, taking a sip every now and again. He seemed to have recovered from his embarrassment, or else he was just distracted. "Isn't it kind of culturally… important to use a Bajoran's given name?"
Ha'kan smiled, maybe even a little surprised. "Glad to see those Federation sociology classes doing work. It's kind of a… close-friends-thing."
Harry eyed him, like maybe he thought they weren't friends. Roommates were probably bound to be some kind of close, at least eventually. Harry would be here for the dirty laundry, and Ha'kan would be here for the nightmares. He'd heard Harry crying into his pillow yesterday. There couldn't have been much else to hide. "But I think the rule is that once you've been shot at together, you're practically related."
That obviously wasn't true. Ha'kan could count the number of Bajorans he called by their given names on one hand, and they were all dead.
"We've known each other maybe a week," Harry said. He took a deep breath and stood, putting his empty tea cup back in the replicator over Ha'kan's head to let it disappear. "And I haven't exactly been very welcoming to you."
Back to the wall, Harry slid down to the floor to sit cornered to him.
Ha'kan shrugged. "We were trying to steal your ship."
"When you put it like that…" With an easier smile, Harry swung his gaze to Ha'kan, eyebrows raised in what looked to him like a well-meaning challenge.
Ha'kan looked at him. Kinda hard to not like him with an attitude like that… "I've had lots of… roommates," he said, and decided just to leave it at that. Most of his life, they were fellow prisoners. Recently, they were whatever Maquis initiate that drew the same number he did. He didn't have family to live with, but he was young enough and his story desperate enough that he could usually find a rug to crash on in a near-stranger's house.
Ha'kan didn't have a lot of friends. Not because he didn't want them, but because he didn't have time. And now all the ones he did have were here. "My life hasn't exactly been the kind that encouraged long-term relationships. But we're gonna be roommates for a long time. Weeks at least."
Harry smiled, sniffed a small chuckle into the back of his hand.
"Sneaking by the pot has never done much for me."
"Sneaking by the pot?"
Ha'kan didn't know how to explain it. "Yeah. When food's cooking and you can't eat it?" Harry's blank face very well communicated that wasn't a phrase that translated. It was such a common expression, Ha'kan had no idea how to explain what it meant or where it came from. It simply was. "Huh. Avoiding something too hard to talk about."
"Like beating around the bush?"
Ha'kan chuckled. "Okay. Sure. It's a waste of time is what I'm trying to say."
"But if you eat early, you'll burn your tongue."
"Fair. But if you wait, who knows if there'll be any left."
"It'll be there. Weeks, at least." Harry sighed and leaned his head back to look at the ceiling. After about a minute, he shook his head, wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "I'm just homesick. I thought I'd be home in six months to visit my folks. And they think I'm dead."
As if he could understand that… But he could imagine understanding it, so he nodded. "Yeah…"
"Do you have family back on Bajor or somewhere?"
Ha'kan shook his head, drawing his knees up to rest his wrists on them. "No. Wish I did, though."
Sometimes. When the Cardassians started killing everyone just before they left, it was like they were rushing to get a job done. Killing every last Bajoran was what they always wanted. They just didn't have the resolve to actually do it until it was the cruelest thing they could have done. Thinking about that day… still made him sick.
Still gave him nightmares.
Harry glanced at him, looking vaguely apologetic even though he had nothing to do with it. Looked shocked, as though… as though he couldn't even imagine understanding that.
Ha'kan offered a smile. "Seems to have worked in my favor. Don't have anybody to miss. Don't have anybody to miss me."
Harry shook his head, and Ha'kan wasn't stupid enough to miss that he'd said the exact wrong thing. "I don't know. I think it's worth it…"
So maybe Ha'kan couldn't have imagined understanding it, either. After counting up the bodies, burning the hospital to dust, and washing the blood off his hands… he was okay with it. His family was at peace; nothing could hurt them anymore. Harry's family wasn't at peace. And neither was Harry. There was no way Harry would understand that.
Or maybe they were both just screwed up and clinging to whatever they'd decided gave sense to the universe. For Harry, that was life. For Ha'kan… it was death.
"Maybe." Ha'kan sighed, glimpsed the PADD he'd put on the desk with the instructions from yesterday's shift. "Hey, what do you know about power transfer relays?"
"A few things." Ha'kan knew he hit the jackpot when Harry looked at him, all smiles and genuine interest. "You're really interested?"
Ha'kan didn't know if he was… but he was interested in not getting his face blown off the next time B'Elanna or Vorik gave him what seemed to be simple instructions. He was also interested in ingratiating himself with his roommate. So… "Yeah. Yeah, I'm interested."