Chapter 3

Harry was confused.

This was not the mild, good-natured confusion that he tended to experience whenever Tom, face planted firmly in both palms, revealed the source of whatever trouble he was embroiled in this week.

Nor was it the slightly more severe confusion that followed when he found himself neck-deep in the aforementioned trouble without any idea of how it had happened.

It wasn't even the overwhelming and often pants-wetting confusion that was all too common in this line of work, when he found himself hopping realities because another Voyager found themselves down a Harry and he would hardly be much use in his own when they were just blowing up the ship anyway, or when he woke up in Sickbay shaking off a nasty case of death.

No, this was a whole new brand of confusion, the kind that a man could only feel when he was jolted from sleep in the wee small hours of the morning, only to find Seven of Nine at his bedside, demanding to know what a Banana Phone was.

"Seven?" he croaked blearily. "What time is it?"

"Odd," she noted. "When I spoke with Captain Janeway about this matter, she was preoccupied with the time as well. Perhaps a Banana Phone is a measure of time."

He struggled into a sitting position and stared in disbelief.

"Hold on; you woke up the captain just to ask her what a Banana Phone is?"

"Unlike others aboard Voyager, Captain Janeway doesn't consider sleep to be more important than expanding one's base of knowledge," Seven replied loftily.

Just the fact that you chose to test that theory clearly means that the Borg aren't as smart as we've been giving them credit for, Harry thought, shaking his head.

"Computer," Seven was meanwhile saying, "play musical selection Paris Banana."

"Oh, God, no," Harry whimpered, dropping his head to his hand as the jaunty introduction started up.

Seven sent him a curious look.

"I thought you weren't familiar with Banana Phones."

"I'm not," Harry said through his fingers. "But I am familiar with Tom's musical taste."

As the energetic, vaguely nonsensical seconds ticked past, Harry became aware that Seven was watching him expectantly.

"What?"

"Do you have any thoughts, Ensign Kim?"

Harry shot her a look somewhere between disbelief and pleading.

"On this?"

"I require a number of different theories before I can draw the correct conclusion. For example, Captain Janeway seemed to believe that the Banana Phone is a tool of terrible vengeance."

"Listening to the song," Harry sighed, "I think I might have to agree."

When the morning dawned, bright and beautiful – not where they were, of course, as that would have signaled something very decidedly Not Right, but presumably somewhere in the vast expanse of the universe – Kathryn was mildly disturbed at the utter absence of guilt within her for the events of the previous night.

Of course, she was a little surprised to hear the music still going – surely Chakotay would have thought to turn the volume down at some point? – and she was starting to become concerned that the integrity of his skull would eventually fail if he kept slamming it into the wall like that, but no guilt to speak of.

Perhaps it was that her own rolling nausea and crushing headache left no room for thoughts of the suffering of others, or perhaps it was just that he was really, really funny when he was angry.

Either way, when he finally dropped exhaustedly into his seat, twenty minutes late after passing out into his breakfast, errant Corn Flakes still lingering at his hairline, she found herself not looking miserably away, but smiling radiantly.

"Good morning, Commander. You look ready to face the day!"

Whereupon Chakotay's eyes narrowed accusingly, before he looked pointedly away, muttering under his breath that yes, he was more than ready to face the day, if the day might present him with the opportunity to wring someone's vicious, evil little neck.

Nevertheless, despite her utter lack of remorse for the events of last night and her hand in them (perhaps "hand" wasn't the right word; "arm and a goodly portion of torso" was a little more accurate), she was quite able to recognize and acknowledge that the joke had run its course. Therefore, when Chakotay asked, in a voice tight with restraint, if he could have a word in private, she resisted the urge, nearly second-nature by now, to deflect his request, and instead stood and gestured politely for him to follow.

So engrossed was he in attempting to light her hair on fire with a mere look, and so engrossed was she in ignoring the vague sound of singeing, that neither noticed the silent dialogue going on behind them.

What did you do? Harry very pointedly Looked at Tom.

It wasn't me! Tom stared fervently in his defense.

Uh-huh; I'll buy that for a dollar, Harry eyed dryly, or words to that effect.

Alright, what are you two turkeys up to over nyaw? Tuvok peered sternly. Tuvok, incidentally, had always enjoyed these silent conversations and the opportunity they allowed him to completely and utterly break character.

Way to go, Tom, Harry glared.

Tom gazed sadly into the imaginary camera that, in his mind, tended to follow him around and document his fascinating days and nights.

Crap…

"What seems to be the problem, Commander?" Janeway was meanwhile asking as the doors shut behind them.

Chakotay made a sound suspiciously like a snort.

"There seems to be some music playing in my quarters. But I guess you already know that."

"Well, that's not much of a problem," she scoffed, picking up a nearby PADD and making a show of looking it over. "Music is a good thing, isn't it?"

"That depends on the music," he countered pleasantly, despite the daggers she could feel from his glare, poking determinedly at the top of her head. "The unexpected soundtrack of my life doesn't qualify."

"Hmm."

"Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Bananaphone," he quoted flatly, his glare deepening. "Sound familiar?"

"I think might have heard something similar about a hundred and nineteen times last night," she replied with a shrug.

"I'm not surprised; as it turns out, I couldn't shut it off."

"Really?" she asked indifferently.

"Really. I tried everything. Up to and including hitting the console several times."

"Ah; well, perhaps if you would use your belongings more gently, they wouldn't break down and start playing strange musical selections."

"With programming to keep them playing indefinitely, that I conveniently don't have authorization to override," he added, moving toward her desk and leaning forward ever so slightly in an attempt to loom over her. "That's an interesting hardware failure."

"Very interesting," she agreed. After a moment, her eyes flickered up to meet his deeply annoyed gaze. "Commander, are you trying to imply something?"

Sighing at the realization that he might as well attempt to intimidate a brick wall, he dropped into the chair across from her.

"You don't think this is a little childish, Kathryn?"

Her eyebrows lifted slightly.

"I'm sorry, what's childish?"

"You really expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with this?"

"To do with what, exactly? Your rough treatment of your own belongings? How could I have caused that? Is my presence in your life that stressful?"

"You? Never," he scoffed. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So, how do I turn it off?"

"Turn what off?"

"The music!"

"You don't like it?"

"It's the same song, over and over! And it was a bad song to start with!"

"If you don't like it, why are you listening to it over and over?"

He took a deep, calming breath, determinedly tamping down his urge to kill.

"I can't turn it off," he finally reminded her, very slowly deliberately.

"And you think it's my fault?" she asked, surprised.

"Who else would it be?" he demanded, by now sitting on his hands lest he made the situation drastically worse by strangling her.

"Well, considering we're talking about your computer here, I'd say you're the most likely suspect."

"Kathryn! I did not set my own computer to play a song about Bananaphones over and over! I don't even know what Bananaphones are!"

"So, call someone to take a look at it."

"I did! I called B'Elanna. She just swore at me in four different languages and terminated the connection."

"Good girl," Kathryn said under her breath.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Nothing," she assured him, eyes wide and innocent.

"Then I tried calling Seven, but you know how that ended."

She nodded her agreement, in blithe disregard of the increasingly deadly glares he was leveling at her.

"I don't think I was able to explain the significance of the Bananaphone to her satisfaction, but with any luck, she'll forget all about it."

"Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you? " he said resentfully.

"You know, if all else fails, you could always try calling someone other than B'Elanna or Seven."

He stared, bewildered.

"Why would I do that?"

"Good point," she conceded. Leaning back in her chair, she regarded him with a vaguely mischievous smile.

"Come on, Chakotay. You have to admit, it was kind of funny."

"No, it wasn't. It was childish and petty, and this kind of thing is beneath you."

"Well, you usually have a better sense of humour than this," she huffed. "Or maybe it's only funny when it's not happening to you?"

He fixed her with a poisonous look, which was rather derailed when he let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

"I'm sure it's hilarious when I'm not running on twenty-seven seconds of sleep, with six and a half hours of Banana Phones rampaging through my brain."

She regarded him sympathetically.

"You do look exhausted. Why don't you go get some sleep?"

He eyed her suspiciously.

"Does that mean you're going to turn the music off?"

She waved off his query.

"I'll get to it."

Suddenly arriving at the conclusion that he no longer cared if his attempts at intimidation were successful or not, he took a menacing step towards her, only to be pleasantly surprised when her recently absent sense of self-preservation kicked in and she hopped carefully out of his range.

"Or we could do it now," she amended. "Would you like me to tuck you in and sing you a lullaby too?"

He made an incredulous noise.

"Kathryn, I've heard you sing. Bananaphone was bad enough."

With that, he turned on his heel and started for the door.

She watched him for a brief moment, pouting.

"I've never been more tempted to cut an album."

Nevertheless, the brief journey was made, their steps guided by the blaring of the Bananaphone, and once their goal was achieved, the aforementioned was brought to an immediate halt, all without any oddly motivated forays into an ill-fated musical career on the part of anyone involved.

Life, it seemed, had returned to normal, or at least as close as it had ever come around these nice people and their extended road trip.

Unfortunately, due to the involvement of the nice people in question, it of course could not last.

And so it was that, three days later, Voyager's fair captain was jolted into sudden wakefulness, not by a red alert, or an omnipotent being mysteriously ending up in her bed, or the multitude of other strange alarm clocks she'd acquired over the past seven years, but by the roar of explosives and rending metal.

"What the crap?" she did not yelp, most likely due to the lack of recent personality-altering head trauma in her life.

Instead, she leapt swiftly from the bed and bolted for the bedroom door, somehow managing to procure both combadge and phaser on the way.

She ground to a halt as her eyes lit on Chakotay seated comfortably on her sofa, tapping his foot happily along to a very familiar piece of music now filling both their quarters, due to the gaping, jagged hole in the wall.

"What did you do?" she demanded, perilously close to a squeak.

He smiled serenely.

"I just came to visit my good friend."

"What the hell is that?" This time, she landed quite squarely in squeak territory, with a little wild gesturing just for added flavour.

"I've been doing a little remodeling," he replied cheerfully.

"How?" she demanded, nearly a wail.

"Just a little something I whipped up while I couldn't sleep."

She struggled briefly for words.

"Chakotay," she finally began slowly. "A little something would be a pair of socks, or a puff pastry. That—" She gestured emphatically to the jagged makeshift doorway. "—is a hole in my wall!"

"Huh," he said, studying his handiwork. "So it is."

"How did you even do that?"

"Actually, I didn't; you did."

"What?"

"I modified your caffe ristretto program."

"I see," she said. "That would do it. That would also explain why I'm having the strangest urge to lick the rubble."

"No, I think that's just because you're insane," he said gently, patting her hand.

Turning pointedly away, Kathryn took several deep breaths and counted to ten. Then to twenty. Then to three hundred seventy-six.

"You," she said, stalking towards the sofa, "just blew out a wall with modified coffee. It takes a pretty sick mind to use something so wonderful for such fiendish and destructive purposes. I don't think you have any business commenting on my mental state."

"Actually, it was probably more the explosive blowing out the wall than the coffee. The coffee was just for an added touch of whimsy."

"Do you have any idea how easily your whimsy could have breached the hull?"

"I wanted you to be able to enjoy the music with me."

"About that; why is it playing again? I turned it off."

"And I turned it back on," he said cheerfully.

"I thought the whole problem was that you couldn't get rid of it! Why would you turn it back on?"

He fixed her with a dark glare.

"It might not have been playing out loud, but for the last two days, everywhere I go, all I can hear is Bananaphone. Do you know what that's like?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Believe me, I was considering breaching the hull, just to end my own life!"

"So, instead of listening to something else like a rational person, you blasted a hole in our wall," she surmised with a huff, already turning. "I'm going to find someone to fix this. I wonder if B'Elanna is still up..."

"Sit down!" he barked, up in an instant and dragging her down to the couch with a tight grip on the back of her nightgown, before settling comfortably next to her and continuing with the same congenial calm as previously, "And listen to the song. After a while, it really does grow on you. Cellular, modular, interactive-odular…"

For a long moment, she was silent, considering her options.

"Listen, Chakotay, I know I could have handled this better, but—oh, my God, what's that?"

On reflex, he looked immediately in the direction she indicated, and then swore under his breath at the sensation of a faint breeze, distinctly like one that might be caused by a sleep-rumpled redhead in sleepwear shooting past him and out the door.

"I'm going to kill her," he muttered, already up and running. "Slowly."

End Notes: Okay, it's now a four-parter. Concision: I need to learn it.