Things That Follow, a startrek: voyager fanfic

Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Star Trek: Voyager. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

Note: This story is divergent from canon circa late season two or early season three, pre-"Blood Fever."

Things That Follow

B'Elanna was three long strides into sickbay before she noticed Paris in the corner, reviewing something on one of the consoles, his curved back facing her. Damn, she thought, damn, damn. Her hand closed into a fist. It had been a long couple of shifts down in engineering trying to compensate for the drain on the warp core and she had been too tired to think to check the sickbay rotation, had, in fact, forgotten he pulled double duty as assistant medic when Kes was not available.

The door hissed shut, closing her off. Too late to turn coward now, to run off and hide and return when it was convenient to do so.

The Doctor looked up from his desk, peering out at her through the glass partitions separating his office from sickbay. "Ah, Lieutenant Torres. I've been expecting you. You're a day late for your check-up."

"I haven't had time," she snapped. "In case you haven't noticed, I've had my hands full keeping the warp core on-line."

"And we're all very grateful," said the Doctor, "but there's no reason to put your health at risk. It's a short procedure, hardly an inconvenience. I just need to make sure the drug's left your system." He turned back to his console, waving absently for her to step forward. "If you would be so kind as to sit on the table, Mr Paris will examine you. Trust me," he added, sotto voce, "he needs the practice."

"Thanks, doc," Paris drawled.

Just her luck. Her nails bit into her palm. B'Elanna kept her chin up and crossed to the exam table, not bothering to so much as glance at Paris. The sooner she got out of sickbay and back down to engineering, the better.

"So," said Paris, running the tricorder in a slow arc through the air before her. "Had any trouble sleeping? Bad dreams?"

"No." She gripped the edge of the table, squeezing tight. "I'm fine."

Paris bent over the tricorder, fiddling with the settings. His tunic bunched slightly, showing more of the high neck of his undershirt folded low on his throat. The marks on his jaw were gone. She imagined that if she were to pull the neck of his shirt down, she would find the mark at the soft, taut juncture of his throat and his shoulder healed, too. Her left hip ached suddenly, for no real reason at all.

"Let's try this again," Paris muttered, and he ran the tricorder across her once more. She watched the Doctor organize a small stack of datapadds over Paris' right shoulder.

The tricorder beeped and she looked down to it without meaning to, found herself looking at Paris' fingers curling reflexively over the keypad, close enough she could see the little golden hairs that dusted his knuckles. Her gut tightened; her shoulders tensed; she wanted to fight him.

He closed his hands around the tricorder.

"B'Elanna," he said in a low voice. "We should talk."

She looked up at that, met his eyes. She recognized the careful neutrality of his expression, the faint concern evident in the tilt of his frown, as if he were simply a worried friend reaching out to another. If she struck him at the right angle, she could crack his jaw. B'Elanna looked away.

"There's nothing to talk about."

Paris' frown darkened. "You can't keep avoiding this."

"I'm not avoiding anything," she snapped, "because there's nothing to avoid. Am I cleared? Can I go back to work now, before some idiot bungles something else up?"

He studied her silently, then stepped back, folding up the tricorder. "Congratulations," Paris said, ducking his head. He smiled thinly. "You're officially drug-free."

A knot at the base of her spine loosened. "Thank you," she said. B'Elanna hopped down from the table, straightening her tunic before she bee-lined for the door, leaving Paris and sickbay and the whole damn mess behind her.

B'Elanna successfully evaded him for another three days, but it couldn't last. Inevitably their breaks coincided.

It was miracle enough she managed three days. The crew was small but the ship wasn't large enough to make it meaningful, and there were days when it seemed like she couldn't escape anyone no matter how hard she tried. She spent most of her time down in engineering, fixing a recurring problem with the power relays on deck four and fine-tuning subroutines, eking out another colossal increase of two percent energy efficiency from the engines through willpower and brute force alone. Carey walked delicate circles around her.

At night she had dreams of ejecting the warp core and losing it among the stars, of the engines failing as Kazon warships drew inexorably near, of Janeway calling her to her office to tell her she had made a mistake when she appointed B'Elanna chief engineer: an old dream, unfounded, she knew now, but no less discomfiting. If nothing else, it was preferable to the alternative.

On the fourth day she considered her replicator rations and the options left to her, then made her way to deck two.

The mess was as full as it ever got, which wasn't very, and it didn't take her long to spot Paris, seated at a small table near the closest window with Harry and Jenny Delaney. She didn't know if he saw her; she didn't wait to find out. B'Elanna held her shoulders straight and her chin high, but she turned her face away as she crossed to Neelix's station.

Neelix peered at her through the steam billowing up in heavy clouds from the small kitchen. "Lieutenant! Why, isn't this a nice surprise. Haven't seen you around much lately."

"I've been busy," she said, crossing her arms tight around her chest.

"And don't I know it," said Neelix, tsking as he tapped her elbow. "Work, work, work, busy as a foluxian druegnar. I respect that about you, lieutenant. A solid work ethic is the basis for any lasting career, as I myself know, having maintained any number of lasting careers, many of them ongoing. Will you be having the grosic stew or the steamed varasis? They're stuffed with cheese, or, well, it's similar to cheese."

He lifted one of the varasis for her to inspect. The resemblance to a grotesquely oversized cockroach was uncanny. Neelix waggled his eyebrows.

B'Elanna grimaced. "I'll have the stew."

Neelix plopped the varasis back into the pot with a sigh. "If you don't mind my saying so," he said as he scooped great, mushy glops of the stew into a large bowl, "you might consider some time off. You're looking a bit worn out. As morale officer, it is my duty to suggest that you pursue a little rest and relaxation. A holodeck vacation, perhaps, with a charming young man?"

B'Elanna grabbed the bowl with more force than she ought. "Keep your nose out of my business," she growled, "or I'll break it."

"Just a suggestion," Neelix said, holding his hand up in a brief, placating gesture. He turned his attention back to the pot, whistling a soft and aimless tune as he turned the varasis over and over.

She curled her fingers around the bowl, held it tight in her hands. She turned to face the mess.

At the table in the distant corner, Harry lifted his hand and waved to her, smiling as he mouthed her name. Seated on the other side of the table, Paris watched her, his hands folded around his glass and his face unreadable. Jenny Delaney whispered something to Harry, who laughed, then looked abashed at his plate, dotted with a handful of varasis. Paris drank from his glass and looked away. B'Elanna flexed her fingers. She, too, looked away.

Tuvok sat alone as he always did, at the same table he always sat at, in the corner farthest from the door, his back to the stars and a small datapadd flat on the table before him. B'Elanna slid into the seat opposite him. Tuvok lowered his spoon.

B'Elanna laid her arms on the table, the one beneath the other, and started eating, keeping her eyes fixed on the rim of the bowl. The stew was thick and strong, as spicy as most of Neelix's dishes and as aesthetically worrisome, but it was hardly unpleasant.

"Is there something with which I may assist you?" said Tuvok.

B'Elanna swallowed. "No."

It was sufficient a response. He returned his attention to the datapadd.

When she finished, she rose from the table with the empty bowl clasped in her right hand. Paris was gone, and with him Harry and Jenny. Lieutenant Baxter and Ensign T'Bree occupied the table in their stead. B'Elanna nodded to Tuvok and ducked into the kitchen to drop the bowl off in the sink. Neelix had removed the pot of varasis from the heat, left it to sit and grow cold on the floor.

B'Elanna descended the nine levels to engineering.

Paris ambushed her in engineering. She ought to have expected it sooner, but the task of keeping the ship up and running in the wake of another encounter with a pair of Kazon carriers absorbed much of her time and energy; the damage dealt the starboard nacelle was enough to distract her from most anything else. It was a comfort, it was familiar, and besides, her sleep cycle was already shot to hell. She threw herself into engineering.

By Tuesday or very early Wednesday, she wasn't certain and couldn't be bothered to check the time, they'd made enough headway to put the starboard engine on-line in a limited capacity. No sense in blowing it out unless they absolutely had to. She reviewed Nicoletti's repair log and pulled at her lip, chewing absently as she cross-referenced the completed repairs with the appropriate schematic, working out how much time they needed to finish repairs and how she could minimize it.

Paris said, "B'Elanna," and she lifted her head. He was three meters from her and quickly closing, and for a moment it was all she could do to breathe, trapped at the console as the safety net she had erected around herself burned.

B'Elanna turned on her heel, looping around the warp core with her boots ringing out on the metal gridplate. His footsteps echoed behind her, tracing her path, hunting her down.

"B'Elanna!"

She hooked an abandoned datapadd off a nearby console and punched at the sensitive touchscreen with her thumb, hard enough to leave a smeared print. She thought briefly of running, of walking in circles until he gave up, but engineering was her turf; this was her ground. She turned on him.

"What do you want, Paris?"

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record," he said, as if she had any idea what that meant, "we need to talk."

She looked up from the datapadd and wished she hadn't. In the blue light of the warp core, Paris' face was pale and strangely shadowed, foreign, but known to her, and far too close. He smelled of aftershave and sweat, a distant fragrance buried beneath the sharp ionized smell of the warp core.

"And you think now is the appropriate time," she said.

Paris shrugged. "It's as good a time as any. Perhaps a little more crowded than I would like," he said, smiling, "but that's easily fixed."

Of course, of course this wouldn't bother him. None of this bothered him. B'Elanna tightened her hand around the datapadd and whatever it was he saw on her face, it was enough. Paris dropped the smile.

"B'Elanna--"

"Find someone else to harass," B'Elanna said, turning away. "I'm busy."

"With what?"

She wanted to slap the incredulity out of his voice, the surety out of his bearing. Her fingers ached from the thought of it. Her palms itched.

"Apply yourself," she said, sneering. "Figure it out. Now move." She pushed past him, deliberately jostling his chest. Her shoulder burned where they'd touched, and her spine crawled; she felt him watching her as she crossed the floor and as she took the stairs two at a time, ascending to the next level, where she grabbed Carey for an impromptu review of the power grid on deck three. She felt Paris' eyes on her long after he left.

Senior staff meetings were manageable so long as she had enough presence of mind to keep her face turned from him and her eyes on someone else, something else, anything else: Chakotay's tattoo, half-buried in his hair, or the stars framed in the sloping window at Janeway's back. Paris made an oblique remark in response to something Harry said and it was snotty enough she forgot herself in the reflexive surge of annoyance and the instinct to fix him with a hard stare and a roll of her eyes, the closest she could get to punching his arm in a professional setting in which they were both expected to behave.

He was angled slightly from her, his face still turned toward Harry, who forged on with his report, as undaunted by Paris' commentary as she was not. The cleanness of his jaw, free of beard and blemish, the unmarked line of his throat, the pale skin at the inside of his wrist exposed where the sleeve bagged: it was like a punch to the gut, a hard and bruising blow. In the morning when she stood before her mirror she could feel, or imagined she felt, the bruises lining her hips, long, dark fingerprints etched into the bone. She could still taste his blood on the back of her tongue.

Paris shifted in his seat. B'Elanna glared at the wall over his shoulder. He shifted again, sliding low in his seat. Paris drummed his fingers briefly on the table, a quick one-two-three count that rattled at the base of her skull.

"Good work, Ensign," Janeway said, smiling at Harry. "Lieutenant Torres, what's our status with the engine repairs?"

B'Elanna snapped her head around. "We've completed about eighty-five percent of the repairs, give or take. The actual casing's about as close to new as we can get it and the connections are fine, but the warp coils are going to need some more attention before we can bring the warp drive back up to full capacity."

Janeway leaned forward, steepling her fingers together. "About how much more time will you need?"

"Two days, maybe one, if I can get volunteers to work double shifts. It shouldn't take too long."

"Finally, some good news," Paris said, flashing her a smile from across the table.

B'Elanna flattened her hand out over her thigh and held it there. Her nails pinched, biting through the thick uniform cloth and pressing into her skin.

Janeway nodded. "Keep me informed, lieutenant. I want to know the moment we can bring the warp drive back on-line." She gazed around the table, smiling firmly at them all. "If there's nothing else...? Dismissed. Mr Tuvok," she said, as B'Elanna rose and Paris followed half a beat behind her, "a word, please."

B'Elanna beat him to the door, but only just, sweeping past him as he said her name, his voice rising at the end of it, frustration scraping it raw. Good, she thought savagely. At least in that she wasn't alone.

"Damn it, B'Elanna--" His hand brushed her shoulder.

She closed the turbolift door on his face, locking him out. Her gut roiled and she sucked in one deep breath, then another, holding herself tall and tight and still until her stomach settled.

Out loud she said, "Engineering." The turbolift descended.

Chakotay noticed; it was too much to hope he wouldn't. He stopped by her quarters after beta shift, to chat and share a pot of replicated mulidian tea, which was not what she preferred, but it was a drink for which he had a marked fondness. B'Elanna was not incapable of compromise.

"I'd like to restructure the power transfer grid if I could," she said, setting her mug aside, "to maximize the energy we draw from the plasma byproduct of the impulse engines. It'll be a challenge, but a good one. The ship could use whatever boost we can give her. She's in good enough condition now, but in a few years..." She shrugged.

"That certainly sounds like a plan of action," Chakotay said. He searched her face, seeing more there than she wanted to show. "And you, B'Elanna," he said. "How are you?"

And there it was.

"I'm fine," she said and she smiled dryly. "Well. As fine as can be expected."

"If you need to talk to someone," he said. He spread his hands out, a passive offering.

"Thank you," she said. She meant it.

He hesitated, then said lightly, delicately, "Have you spoken with Tom recently?"

B'Elanna held her hands still in her lap. "No," she said, "but I will. Soon. I promise."

Chakotay studied her for a long, quiet moment, his aspect quiescent and thus unreadable to her. B'Elanna shifted, unfolding her leg to swing it over the side of the bed, to hide her growing discomfort.

Chakotay held out his hand to her, thick fingers turned up to her in long, sweeping lines: an invitation, or an offer of comfort. With a sonorous grace, he intoned, "Do not reserve for tomorrow those tasks which must need be addressed today."

"What is that?" She wrinkled her nose. "Some folk wisdom?"

He closed his hand and withdrew. "I wouldn't know," Chakotay said, hefting his shoulders and letting them fall. "I read it in a book once." He smiled indulgently as she laughed, covering her face with her hands.

She did not laugh long. B'Elanna sighed into her hands and lowered them, peering over her fingertips at Chakotay, who said, "I want to know you are and will be well, B'Elanna."

"I am," she said. She knotted her fingers together and looked down to them. "I will be."

"Then see it through," he told her, as he had told her so many times before, in times of crisis or simple inconvenience.

B'Elanna smiled again, not quite so dryly. "Don't worry, Chakotay," she said. "I can handle it."

She could.

She could.

She dreamt:

She bore him down onto the smooth stones, already ripping at his tunic, wanting and needing more, more, more, more than just the touch of his hand on her shoulder as he said, "Wait--" hot breath gusting on her cheek as she bent low and sunk her teeth into his throat, buried them deep, deep enough that his blood filled her mouth, hot and metallic and sweet like a drug.

He said, "We can't," but she did, fighting him back down when he tried to rise. He stared up at her, blue eyes so blue she couldn't stand it, she couldn't stand him, the smell of him, the feel of him, the taste of his blood burning through her tongue. She raked her fingers down his chest. He arched beneath her.

She said, "Fight me," but he wouldn't fight, he wouldn't fight her. He said, "Please," and touched his thumb to her mouth.

She said, "I won't," but she would. She scraped her teeth along his jaw, rolling her tongue against his skin, which tasted of sweat and dirt and shaving cream and where she ripped the skin with her teeth, blood. His hand closed around her bare hip, fingers like brands, like irons, dragging her down hard against him. It wasn't hard enough. It wasn't enough.

"Fight me," she snarled.

His eyes were so blue, his mouth so red, slick with spit, slick with blood. He said, "B'Elanna."

B'Elanna woke with Paris' voice still ringing in her ears, groaning her name like a prayer. She rolled over to bury her face in her pillow, holding her breath and counting out the seconds until her lungs burned and her throat ached.

So, all right. She wouldn't sleep tonight either.

She showered with her eyes closed and dressed without looking to the mirror, knowing precisely what she would see: thin face, tired, the skin bruising faintly around her eyes, dark under her ridged brow; and knowing what she would not: a handprint on her hip, another on her breast, an erratic line of shallow bites marking her clavicle. Her shoulders, her throat, her spine unmarked by either tooth or nail. The wonders of modern medicine.

She clipped her commbadge on and headed out, out and down to engineering, where at least she could find some peace of mind.

Long range scanners picked up what looked to be a dilithium deposit on or near the surface of a planetoid at the heart of a small and barren system, orbiting a dying star. Atmospheric conditions meant site-to-site transportation was out of the question, which necessitated the use of a shuttlecraft and environmental suits.

The way the last few weeks had been going for her, she wasn't at all surprised to find Paris at the controls, trading rejoinders with Lieutenant Cosgrove, whose laugh was like a bark, harsh and loud, grating on her ears and digging into her skin. B'Elanna triple-checked the equipment and the oxygen supply in each suit; the last thing she needed was a repeat of the fiasco on Breggas Gamma.

"All right, we're cleared," Paris said. "As soon as everyone's seated, we'll be good to go."

B'Elanna ducked around Ensign Boum and slipped into the passenger seat, drawing up the scanner readings with a few quick touches. "The deposit should be located on the night side," she said. She pulled the topographical map to the forefront. "Here."

"Got it," Paris said, his long fingers flashing across the board. "Course laid in. Everyone buckled in?"

"What?" said Cosgrove.

"Twentieth century slang," Paris said. He smiled suddenly, the clean line of his jaw pulling back. "Torres knows what I'm talking about, right?"

B'Elanna busied herself with the scanner readings, drawing up likely estimates for what they would find under the assumption the atmospheric conditions weren't also playing havoc with Voyager's long range scanners.

"Don't worry about it," Paris said under his breath. He twisted his wrist slightly and the shuttlecraft slid free of Voyager, passing from Shuttlebay One into the sudden vastness of space.

The descent was largely unremarkable, but for a passing rough patch upon breaching the atmosphere, which Paris managed with a few practiced flicks of his fingers. If the shuttle rocked at all upon landing, the inertial dampeners masked the movement. Paris did a quick systems check, walking his hands across the controls.

"Well," he said, "here we are."

What she saw of the planetoid's surface out the viewscreen was dismal: heavy, twisting spires of grey rock laid over with a dark, green-tinged fog the consistency of the heavy soup Neelix had served the night before.

"Homey," said Paris in a dry aside, as if he were sharing a joke with her. "All it needs is a welcome mat and some nice curtains. Floral would be the best choice, I think, but lace could work just as well."

B'Elanna closed out the files and rose from her seat, passing both Boum and Cosgrove, who was still yawning and trying to cover it. She rapped her knuckles on the back of Cosgrove's seat. "Come on. I don't want to sit here all day."

"Sorry," Cosgrove said, muffling another yawn. "Sorry."

Paris said something to Cosgrove that made him laugh, his voice booming at her back, the heft of it obscuring whatever clever thing Paris had said. It was silly to think she could feel his eyes on her, but all the same, her neck itched. B'Elanna hitched her shoulders high.

Getting into the environmental suit was always a trick, but it was one she found easier to pull off each time. By the time Boum had zipped into the inner layer, she was checking the seals of her suit's outer layer, carefully following the seam with her fingers and her eyes.

"You kids have fun digging," Paris called out to them, "but try not to drag any mud into my clean shuttle." His hand ran over the controls and the airlock sealed behind them, separating the main cabin from the aft.

B'Elanna jammed her helmet on, checking and double-checking the seals before she hefted the bag to her shoulder. She motioned to Boum, who ran his hands over his helmet's seals and nodded, and Cosgrove, who flashed her a thumbs up. "Open the hatch," she said.

"Your wish is my command," said Paris.

The hatch slid down and the fog rushed in to meet them, enveloping B'Elanna and her team.

Paris said, "Be careful," and his voice was soft in her ear.

As if she needed Tom Paris to remind her to be careful, as if she were a child in need of a firm, guiding hand to clasp in her own. As if his were the hand she would take.

B'Elanna adjusted the setting of her drill and turned again to the thick tunnel wall, bracing herself with a hand pressed firmly against the ceiling. The tricorder readings indicated another two or three meters of solid stone before she would break through to a large cavity filled with crystal formations like jagged teeth lining a mouth. Dilithium, the tricorder promised her.

B'Elanna shifted her weight again, leaning her shoulder against the wall little more than a moment before it caved, the rock face crumbling and collapsing square on her extended arm, knocking the phaser free. She yanked back, slamming into the opposite wall, hard enough to jog her helmet forward, bouncing it off her skull. Small lights went off behind her eyelids, little blue and pink fireworks that faded as swiftly as they came.

"Shit!" She curled instinctively around her hand, then pulled back, turning her arm to check the suit. The inner layer flashed at her in a dark, ragged line that ran from her wrist nearly to her elbow. "Shit!" B'Elanna said again. This suit was designed to withstand temperatures in excess of four hundred celsius and rock tore through it. She hissed through her teeth.

"What's going on?" Cosgrove said, his voice shaking over the comm line.

"This piece of shit suit--" She bit her tongue. "I'm going back to the shuttle," she said, as evenly as she could manage. "My suit's been compromised. You and Boum keep at it. I'll contact you when I'm inside."

"What?" said Cosgrove. "How did you manage that?"

"Cram it, lieutenant," B'Elanna growled. To his credit or her reputation, he crammed it.

Paris met her at the airlock, medkit in hand. B'Elanna popped her helmet as soon as she was through, dropping it in the alcove where it rolled into the corner.

"I don't know if the inner layer broke," she said, preceding Paris to the nearest seat. She struggled with her gloves, the thick fingers catching on the raised seals, but failing to pop them. "I patched the tear, but--"

"Sit down," Paris said, "and let me look at it." He touched her shoulder lightly and she jerked back from his touch, smashing down into the seat. Paris crouched beside her, his lips thinning.

She'd made a mess of the patch job, squatting there in the tunnel with only her wrist light to illuminate the work and little time to do it in, more concerned with sealing the gash as quickly as possible than with future accessibility. He cut through the arm, peeling away the taped outer layer and the inner layer beneath it to get to her uniform buried beneath it all.

B'Elanna stared down at him, at his soft pink neck bent over her arm, his hands working to check the inner layer for any breaks, and breathed. He smelled faintly of sweat and something that was neither aftershave nor cologne, something purely and recognizable Tom Paris. She smelled like dirt and stale dirt at that, thanks to the precautionary sterilizing radiation burst in the airlock.

"What exactly were you doing out there?" he said, tearing the sleeve free with a sudden, violent jerk. He fumbled for the medical tricorder, fingers stumbling over the plastic shell.

Like hell she was going to sit there and listen to him rail at her.

"I'm not interested in the lecture," B'Elanna said, "so save your breath."

Paris glared at her, medical tricorder half-open, his hand squeezed so tightly around it his palm had gone white. "You know," he said, almost conversationally, "I'm getting really sick of your attitude."

B'Elanna laughed. "Really," she said. "You're sick of my attitude."

"That's right," he said, smiling up at her. She wanted to break his teeth. "Your attitude. I understand that you're still upset, which is fine, so am I, but I would appreciate it if you could try to be a little constructive."

"You want constructive?" B'Elanna said, leaning forward. "Then leave me alone."

Paris sucked in a breath, his lips compressing around his teeth. So close, she could see the twitching of the muscle high in his cheek, the dilation of his pupils, the belligerent set of his jaw. The faint shadow lining his skin, where the beard would grow in if he let it. If he wanted a fight, fine. So did she.

"B'Elanna," Paris said and the commline erupted into a cascade of sound, warping, then subsiding as Cosgrove shouted, "Got it! You wouldn't believe how much of this stuff there is. We're gonna need more gear if we're gonna haul it all out."

"I'll be there in a minute with the spare suit," B'Elanna said, watching Paris: the minute flexing of his jaw, the harsh angle of his brow. "As soon as Paris clears me."

Paris folded the medical tricorder in half with a soft, distinct click.

"Yeah," he said, holding her gaze. "She's clear."

"B'Elanna," Janeway said, rising from her seat to greet her. The office was as clean, as familiar and business-like as the captain herself, who waved a hand at the chair opposite and said, "Please, take a seat," as she sank back down into her own high-backed chair.

Far be it for B'Elanna to disobey such a request. She straightened out a small fold in her trouser leg and thought in passing that perhaps she ought to have brushed her hair properly and not merely with a few cursory swipes of her fingers, but it wasn't like the captain hadn't seen her in worse shape. She shied from the thought and path down which it led.

Janeway set her coffee mug aside and leaned forward, steepling her hands at her chin. "Now, what's this all about?"

B'Elanna folded her hands together in her lap. "You know that we retrieved a substantial amount of dilithium from PVG-0001X--"

"Half a kiloton," Janeway remarked, smiling over her laced fingers. "Quite a haul. Your team did well, lieutenant."

B'Elanna looked briefly to her hands, then lifted her head to meet her captain's steady gaze. "Unfortunately," she said, "the dilithium is unrefined, which means it's of no use to us as it is. I was hoping that I could, with your permission, of course, set up a makeshift refinery in Cargo Bay Two." She squared her shoulders. "It's going to take a lot of equipment and a lot of space and a lot of manpower, but I think the prospect of a replenished supply of refined dilithium is compensation enough for the inconvenience."

"I agree," Janeway said lightly. "Cargo Bay Two is yours for as long as you need it. I'll expect regular updates; you might want to forward them to Tuvok as well."

"I'll get right on it," B'Elanna said, beginning to rise.

"While you're here," Janeway said pointedly and B'Elanna sank back down into the chair. Janeway studied her for a long moment. Very gently she said, "I'm certain this is a question you've had to answer frequently in the last few weeks, but please, indulge me. How are you doing?"

B'Elanna's heart skipped a beat. "Better," she said at last. "Much better."

When nothing else proved forthcoming, Janeway lowered her hands. "If there's anything you need," she said, "from myself or the Doctor, please do not hesitate to ask. We're here for you."

B'Elanna smiled. "Thank you, but really, I'm fine. I've spoken with Commander Chakotay," she offered.

Janeway smiled back at her, the corners of her eyes crinkling softly. She had a way of smiling that made B'Elanna feel reassured and welcomed, even in the worst of circumstances, but now she felt only guilt, like a small weight in the center of her chest, dragging her down.

"I'm glad to hear it," said the captain.

"If I can," B'Elanna said, moving to rise again, "I'd like to get started on setting up the refinery."

"Certainly," Janeway said. She reclaimed her coffee mug and tipped it at B'Elanna, as if to toast her. "I've taken up enough of your time, I think."

Nearly to the door, B'Elanna hesitated. Her chest ached. She turned sharply on her feel, roundabout to face Janeway, who stared up at her, serene and slightly curious, the rim of her coffee mug white against her lip. B'Elanna knocked her fist against her thigh and said, perhaps not as gracefully as she would have liked, but honestly: "Thank you."

Janeway smiled again. "You're welcome," she said.

B'Elanna nodded stiffly, and turned around again to the door, which slid open before her, revealing the corridor beyond and within it Paris, waiting.

He stared down at her for the half-beat before she stepped into the corridor, his expression vaguely startled and tired in a way that struck her suddenly as painful to see. She stepped into the corridor, angling away from him. Paris straightened and he was once again aloof and sardonic, chin tilted up, mouth drawn back into a noncommittal smile.

"B'Elanna," he said.

"Paris," she said.

His face tightened. B'Elanna stepped to the side. He swept past her, then, as she had by him countless times over the last few weeks. She let out her breath.

"Ah, Mr Paris," said the captain. "Just the man I needed to speak with."

He bowed his head in ironic deference, the loose line of his shoulders dipping low, and then he was gone, cut off from view by the closing door.

There was no reason for her to stay there, hovering outside Janeway's office as if rooted to the carpet, so B'Elanna set off for the turbolift, reconfiguring the cargo bay's spaces in her head. In the privacy of the turbolift, as the door closed behind her, B'Elanna pressed a palm to her chest and rubbed absently.

Refitting the smaller of the two cargo bays to house the proposed refinery proved exactly as laborious and frustrating a process as she had predicted when she and Carey first drew up the plans on a pair of datapadds, harassed for time and scribbling over each other's estimates. B'Elanna resisted the urge to dig her fingers into her scalp and pull.

"Chafin," she said with what she felt was commendable restraint, "what in the hell do you think you're doing with those toracite rods?"

Approaching from around a stack of repurposed storage units, Vorik adjusted his speed so as to remain at a prudent distance of one meter. "I have compiled the reports you requested," he said, proffering the datapadd.

B'Elanna waved him off. "Chafin!" she bellowed. "Don't make me come over there, because I swear I will break that rod over your thick skull. No! Do it right! What?" she snapped at Vorik.

"The reports," he said.

B'Elanna blinked, still caught up in her fantasy of smashing Chafin over the head with a metal cylinder. "Oh," she said, accepting the padd. "Thank you. Now get lost. No offense," she added.

"I have taken no offense," Vorik said. "The intensity of your aggravation and your inability to distinguish between targets while so aggravated is only to be expected considering what little training you have received on the subject of emotional control."

"Congratulations, ensign," B'Elanna said, smiling so her teeth showed. "You're next on my list."

Vorik looked affronted, in as much as any Vulcan ever appeared affronted, but what did she care? He said something about sharing meditative techniques and B'Elanna made a disinterested noise deep in her throat that could, perhaps, have been interpreted as a warning growl.

"We could speak later, if you wish," Vorik suggested, persisting valiantly. "There is an especially soothing program available on the holodeck--"

"No," B'Elanna tossed over her shoulder, "I don't think so. But thanks for the offer."

B'Elanna crossed the cargo bay, ducking around and under the assembled equipment as she made her way to Carey. "How's your team doing?" she said, eyeing their progress.

"Could be worse," Carey said philosophically.

"Doesn't that just inspire confidence."

"I haven't had to send anyone to sickbay, so I'm counting it as a victory."

"Don't be too hasty," B'Elanna said sourly. She pinched at her eyes, digging her thumbs into the gritty corners.

Carey said, "I hope you won't mind if I ask when you're planning to take a break."

"I don't mind," B'Elanna said, "and I'm not."

"You really should think about knocking off," Carey said. He raised his hands defensively. "Not that I have the right to tell you what you should do with your time. After all," he said, "I am only your assistant and friend. And it's not like you've been down here twice as long as anyone else. Or that you clearly have not been maintaining the recommended average of seven hours sleep a night."

"What are you, my father?" B'Elanna muttered, glaring down at the datapadd.

"Just think about it," Carey said. "For Chafin's sake."

B'Elanna expelled her breath on a short laugh. "Chafin," she said.

"Is doing the best he can."

B'Elanna listened to the pounding in her head and said, "I'll think about it." Maybe an hour or two with a soothing program on the holodeck wasn't entirely without merit.

The Cardassian gul reached for his shockstick, but B'Elanna intercepted him, bringing her arm down on his and shoving the heel of her palm against the soft underside of his jaw. He reeled, spitting off obscenities. B'Elanna pushed up close, striking him twice on the mouth, left fist followed by the right. He stumbled and B'Elanna reached out to him. She knotted her fingers in his oily hair and drew his face down to strike him again and again, the blood smearing thick and hot and dark across his face, across her closed fingers. She pulled back for another blow. In that brief moment of vulnerability he surged forward, slamming his forearm against her ribs.

The crowd shouted; the arena shook with the force of it. B'Elanna swore and fell back. The Cardassian cracked his neck and turned, spitting a gobbet of blood. He grinned at her, teeth black with his blood.

"Try again, little Klingon," he said.

B'Elanna bared her teeth and came at him.

The holodeck doors hissed twice, once to open, again to close. From the back of the arena, hidden in the illusory shadows, Paris said, "Computer, freeze program."

The Cardassian went still, his battered face inches from her own. She swung again, driven by the thought of bashing the hard line of his nose back into his skull, but her fist just swept through the hologram, touching nothing, wrecking nothing, satisfying nothing.

Paris descended into the arena. His footsteps rang out behind her, slow, but even. Deliberate.

"You know," he said, "there's a perfectly good gym just a couple doors down the hall."

B'Elanna flexed her fingers, curling them into fists, then forcing them flat. Sweat dripped from the end of her nose; it rolled down her spine in long, sticky trails between her shoulder blades, and pricked at her eyes. Her knuckles ached. Her skin thrummed. She rolled her shoulders.

"What do you want, Paris?"

He followed the curve of the arena and stopped, an obscure red line at the corner of her vision. "Don't you think you've been avoiding me long enough?"

She blinked the sweat out of her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do," Paris said.

B'Elanna flexed her hands again, hard so the tendons in her wrists pulled tight, hard so they ached.

He said, "We have to talk about it."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"We both know that isn't true," said Paris. "And you're running away from it."

B'Elanna turned on him, her fingers curled so tightly the nails cut into her palms.

"I'm not running away from anything," she snarled. "You understand nothing. Just--" She wanted to strike him. She wanted to push him away. She wanted to shove him to the ground, she wanted to--

She flung her arm out. "Get out of here, Paris."

"I understand this is uncomfortable for you," Paris said, and there it was, his temper licking up underneath all that carefully cultivated concern, "but it's not like it's easy for me, either. In case you've forgotten, you weren't the only one there, so if you could just hold off on the hostilities for a minute, I'd appreciate it."

"Oh, believe me," B'Elanna said. "I haven't forgotten."

"So stop trying to ignore it!" Paris said. "Deal with it. You could start by not blaming me for what happened."

"I don't--" B'Elanna scrubbed at her face. "I don't blame you," she said through her teeth.

"Yeah? Well, you fooled me. Look," he said, as he took a careful step toward her, his hands spread, palms up: an offering of peace. His feet scraped across the dirt.

He said, "I know how you must feel--"

"Enlighten me."

"I think you're angry," Paris said. "And humiliated, and you probably feel violated, and you probably want to wreck a few things, and that's fine. I feel the same way, B'Elanna."

She laughed, because there was nothing funny about it, because he was too close, because she was exhausted and sticky with her sweat and the blood of a hologram and the only other thing she could think to do was to shove Paris until he stopped talking, until he left her alone. B'Elanna felt the holographic blood on her fingers, felt it drying on her face, and in her mouth she knew the taste of Paris' blood.

She spat, "I think you're full of shit, Paris."

"Tom," he said. "You didn't have a problem with my name before. B'Elanna," he said and he set his hand upon her arm, his fingers sliding through the sweat to cup her shoulder.

B'Elanna set her hands on his chest and pushed. Paris staggered and fell, his knee crumpling beneath him. He looked up at her and she remembered the way he had looked up at her when she bore him down onto the cold stone floor, his teeth flashing, his throat trembling; she remembered the way his hands came up to touch her. She turned her face away.

"Just leave me alone," she snarled.

"I can't do that," he said quietly. "If you keep doing this, if you keep trying to pretend nothing happened, then all it's going to do is eat you alive."

"It's none of your business what I do, or how I deal with it."

"It is," Paris said, "because I'm your friend, or I was your friend. I'm as much a part of this thing as you are, and I'm as much to blame as you are--"

"No," she said. "You're not."

He said, "B'Elanna," and he reached out to her, still crouched on his knees in the dirt, his face cast into shadow.

B'Elanna said, "End program," and then she left him there.

It wasn't his fault.

She knew this.

They injected B'Elanna first. She shouted at them, swore and threatened as she struggled with her energy bonds, but with each attempt to pull free the bonds tightened, until the rope of energy looped around her throat choked her. The scientist pulled the needle free after a long minute and B'Elanna made a noise deep in her chest, like a sob or a moan. She arched slightly, her throat working, fingers scrabbling on the tiles.

She heard Tom shouting, heard him say, "What the hell did you do to her?" As through a veil, she saw them come for him with another vial and another needle, as she lay gasping on the floor. She felt as though they had driven a heated knife into her arm, and with every breath the heat pierced deeper, flooding her veins and driving her heart faster and faster, till it was all she could do to simply breathe.

She closed her eyes and waited for the next blow, but it never came, and when she heard Tom moan, the sound of it catching in his throat, she opened her eyes.

B'Elanna stumbled up onto her feet, her heart hammering at her breast, limbs thick with fire, and found Tom, curled around himself. "Tom," she said and she fell, trembling, to her knees beside him. She touched his arm. "Tom," she said again. "We have to--" but she couldn't remember what. She burned all over, and when Tom rose onto his elbows, chest quivering and his pulse fluttering madly in his throat, she couldn't-- she didn't know--

He was so close. She couldn't think. He was so close. She wanted--

B'Elanna pressed her mouth against his neck and breathed in: the salt, the fading, cloying fragrance of his aftershave, the layer of iron-rich earth he'd accumulated in the struggle outside, and another scent hidden under all the layers, something elusive and dry. It was so hard to think: her head throbbed, and she felt as though she were a wire drawn tight, waiting to snap. B'Elanna ran her tongue along the back of her teeth and inhaled again, rubbing her nose against the soft spot at the corner of his jaw, tucked beneath his ear.

Tom said, "Oh, God, B'Elanna," and his voice scraped; he choked. He closed his hand around her shoulder, his fingers tearing at her soiled uniform, and B'Elanna shoved him down, down against the stone, molding herself against him. He was hard against her, but pliant, even as she closed her teeth on his jaw. He shuddered, pushing her away, pulling her down.

She ran her tongue along his jawline and said, "We have to--" and it was gone again, swallowed up in the fire that knotted her gut and prickled her skin. She bit his throat, at the place where his pulse thrummed near the surface, and ripped his tunic, tearing it apart with vicious pulls, unmindful of the places where her nails caught on his skin.

He said her name again, in protest or welcome, she neither knew nor cared. She had his scent; she knew his blood. He was hers to take and burn and bleed. Tom tightened his fingers around her hip, his grip biting into the muscle. His eyes were so dark, swollen pupils ringed with blue. His tongue flashed across his lip.

"You're mine," she growled, and took him.

Ringed about them at a distance, far enough removed for protection, but close enough to observe, their captors watched in motionless silence, indistinct and pale against the whiteness of the walls.

She slept poorly that night, as she had slept poorly every night for the last twenty-three nights. She kicked off her sheets in a sudden fury, then lay spent on the bed, skin hot, her head aching, wanting desperately to simply close her eyes and drift off to sleep: a real sleep, a deep sleep, free of the distorted memories dreams presented her.

In this dream, she cornered Paris in the conference room and ran her fingers down his inner thighs as Janeway and Chakotay and Tuvok and the Doctor and Kes looked on, her private gallery of detached observers, silent and unmoving. In another, no one came to rescue them and the drug fever remained inside her, but not within Paris, who lifted his hands to her shoulders to ward her off, but could not; he was too weak, too fragile, too human to stop her from taking what she wanted and had wanted, but could not admit.

The weight in her chest was a crushing stone.

B'Elanna punched her pillow, pounding it flat. It wasn't right to imagine his face, but she was tired of seeing her own. Her fingers trembled. She was so tired, too tired even to sustain her anger, always a simple task in the past. She tucked her arms beneath her breasts and curled up around her gut. If she could only excise that one night, if she could push it far enough away from her that she would never have to think of it again--

"Deal with it," he'd said.

Enough, she thought with a fury that exhausted itself even as it welled inside her. Enough.

B'Elanna scrubbed her hands over her face, rough enough to scratch. "Computer," she said around her palms. "Locate Lieutenant Paris."

"Lieutenant Paris is currently on the bridge."

B'Elanna stared up at her ceiling, where no shadows stirred. So, she thought. What are you going to do now?

"I'll talk to him," she said to the empty room, and she meant it; she did. "Later. I'll talk to him."

B'Elanna closed her eyes, but she did not sleep.

Engineering brought the refinery on-line by the end of the fourth day, a delay precipitated by an unexpected emergency with the power transfer grid. She made a note to tackle her plans to restructure the PTG sooner than she had originally intended, after the refinery proved itself. Early tests came back positive, and when, at the end of several tense hours, they successfully produced a single refined dilithium crystal, B'Elanna found herself grinning like a fool at the team of engineers she had selected to oversee it.

She clapped Chafin on the shoulder and he jolted, staring round in surprise. "Good work," she said gruffly.

"Oh!" Chafin said. His face creased as he smiled and he said, shyly, "Thank you."

B'Elanna returned to engineering proper in a far better mood than that in which she had left it early that morning, muttering under her breath about devil-may-care pilots who put too much stress on the engines for no good damn reason, a thought which startled her with its easy familiarity. Her gut siezed up, tightening into a hard knot. B'Elanna took two deep breaths and pushed through it.

The turbolift opened on engineering and B'Elanna crossed through, already shouting for Ensign Jiang and the most recent readings from the power transfer grid.

"Here you are, sir," said Jiang, passing on the padd. "I ran diagnostics on the engines as well, just to be sure, and that's here, see--"

B'Elanna squeezed her arm in gratitude. "I need you to run another scan on the power couplings on grid five oh gamma."

"On it," Jiang chirped.

B'Elanna consulted the padd as she slipped around the warp core, boots slapping the metal grill, which clanged and shuddered slightly beneath her. "Damn," she said, scrolling through the read-out. She made a sudden, sharp turn for the nearest unoccupied console, nearly running down an ensign who stepped in her path. "Out of my way," she snapped, and he fell back, apologizing with wide eyes and spread hands.

She drew up the schematics for the power transfer grid on the console and swore again. She tapped her commbadge. "Jiang, run scans on grids five oh gamma through six nine gamma."

"Running!" said Jiang.

B'Elanna bit her lip and set the computer to cross-reference the readings with the expected standard logged in the database. "Damn," she said again. She smacked her palm down on the console, lightly so as not to bruise the casing.

At her back, one of the engineers said, "Oh, no. You're kidding me."

B'Elanna looked up instinctively, steeling herself for the worst: a leak in the warp core, or a power drain that threatened to cripple the ship.

"Wasn't that a trading mission?" he continued. "You know, peaceful?"

"Yeah, well, it wasn't. Peaceful," Carey said, scowling at his console. "Boum and Baxter should be fine, but Paris--"

"What happened?" B'Elanna said, cutting through. Her voice rang out far too loud in her ears, almost deafening. She said, "What about Paris?"

"There was an incident," Carey said. "The shuttle was fired on. Turns out the Boradi weren't so friendly after all. Boum and Baxter made it back okay, which is great, but the shuttle's junk now."

"Just what we need," the other engineer muttered. "Another busted shuttle to fix."

B'Elanna forced her hands to lie flat on the console, fingers twitching, palms burning up. "And Paris?" she said. "What about him?"

Carey's mouth pinched.

"It's not good," he said.

She waited until her shift was over before she took the lift to deck five. The power grids were in need of immediate attention, and anyway, it was hardly like she could be of any help in sickbay. It wasn't much of a trial to imagine the Doctor's peevish requests for her to get out of his way, unless of course she wanted Lieutenant Paris' condition (whatever it was) to detoriate, in which case please, continue.

She came to a stop outside sickbay. All through her shift she had thought, I have to see him, and: I have to tell him, but now that she was here she could not think of anything at all to say or anything at all to do. She thought, Well, first, you could go inside. B'Elanna drew in a breath and expelled it all in a rush, hot air spilling out of her. She could imagine all too easily what she would see if she entered sickbay, Paris laid out in the critical care unit, pale and bruised, long face still as if in death.

She caught the soft sound of voices ahead of her, two crewman approaching from around the far corner, and B'Elanna turned on her heel and walked back to the turbolift, her footsteps muffled in the carpet. Coward, she thought, coward, coward, you're running away again, you always do, and she clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles ached.

"I'm not running away," she said aloud, for the benefit of the turbolift.

The computer said, "Please clarify your destination."

"Engineering," she said. She leaned her head back against the rounded wall and counted out the seconds until she arrived. The lift stopped; the door opened. All was chaos.

"Oh, thank God, you're here," said Carey.

B'Elanna stepped out.

It was Chakotay and Tuvok who found B'Elanna and Tom, naked and wrapped around each other, and it was Chakotay and Tuvok who rescued them. She woke before Tom, her half-Klingon physiology purging the drug and the sedative the Doctor administered well in advance of his fully human physiology.

"Where," she said, but her voice rasped and her throat closed, and she coughed violently instead.

Kes rose to touch her brow. "You're on Voyager," she said gently, "in sickbay. You're safe now, among friends. Lie still; you're very weak."

"Tom," B'Elanna said, trying again to rise.

Kes pressed her down. "He's safe, too," she said. "Please, B'Elanna--"

"I want to see him," she insisted, grabbing at Kes' arm.

Kes' eyes flickered from her to the Doctor, fussing about with one of the consoles. "All right," she said. "But only for a moment. And you're not leaving this bed."

B'Elanna nodded, and swallowed down her shame, unable even to sit up without Kes slipping an arm beneath her and hauling her upright.

"There," Kes said, breathing in B'Elanna's ear. "See? He's all right."

Tom lay prone upon the cot beside her own, his face and animated hands still. B'Elanna leaned forward slightly, refocusing her eyes as her vision blurred, her head swimming with the effort. His face was pale, white beneath the faint tan, but his face, his throat, his exposed shoulders, they were all clean, and his chest rose and fell in an easy, steady rhythm.

"He was very badly hurt," Kes continued, easing B'Elanna down onto her cot, "but as you can see, he's much better now." She smiled kindly at B'Elanna. "There's no need to worry."

B'Elanna turned her face into the pillow, away from Kes, away from Tom.

The Doctor discharged Paris on Friday.

She stood in the corridor outside his quarters, listening to her heart jackhammering against her ribs. She could still walk away. She could walk on, she could pass him by, she could step back into the turbolift and ask it to take her to deck eight and the refinery or deck eleven and engineering. Deck seven. Deck nine.

B'Elanna pressed her hand against the pad.

"Come in," Paris shouted, his voice ringing out through the channel.

The door slid aside and B'Elanna took her courage and draped it across her shoulders as she would a coat of armor. She stepped into his quarters. The door whispered behind her.

Paris turned from contemplation of his desk to face her, and whoever it was he expected, it wasn't her. The room was dark, the lights brought low. She could not read the expression on his face or the angle of his shoulders, the way he held his long hands cupped before him.

He said, "B'Elanna," wondering. He blinked and smiled, settling back against his chair as he said, attempting lightness, "Well, isn't this a surprise." His voice cracked slightly. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

In the darkness, his face was pale, his eyes black, the smooth line of his jaw a known mystery.

B'Elanna swallowed the weight in her chest. She said, "We need to talk."

This story was originally posted at livejournal on 06/28/2009 for the fic challenge cliche_bingo, hosted on livejournal. I used the prompt "Aliens Make Them Do It" for the free space on my card.

Enormous thanks are due to Rawles and WR (rawles and a_white_rain respectively on livejournal), without whose criticism, advice, and support this story would be far greater a mess. Any failings which remain are my own.