Round Robin
CHAPTER TITLE: Always on my Mind
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: PG-13
CODES: C/T
DISCLAIMER: You know who they really belong to. We're just taking them out for a little fun.
THANKS TO: Briana, for the concept. Kathy Speck, for the loan of her "Persistence of Vision" tape. (Couldn't find mine!) Jim Wright (www.reviewboy.com) for his Season Two episode summaries, which helped me remember what everybody was up to at that point in the series. Diane Bellomo for proofreading.
CHAPTER SUMMARY: A week after Persistence of Vision, Chakotay can't forget the fantasy the Bothans brought to life for him.
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***** double rows of asterisks indicate a flashback sequence
It had been one week since Voyager's encounter with the Botha.
To be precise, one week, one day, three hours, and, oh, about thirty-seven minutes.
Chakotay wondered how many weeks -- and days, and hours, and minutes -- it would take before the memories of that encounter gave him peace.
At the first officer's right, Captain Janeway continued today's briefing, in evenly-modulated, precise words of which he heard perhaps one in three. Thank the gods his rank would enable him to view the recording of this meeting later, or any useful information imparted here would be forever lost to him. Thank the ancestors, as well, that he had already spoken his part and (with any luck) would not need to speak further before the meeting was over.
Though to all appearances he was paying attention to his captain, his focus was in fact on the woman who sat at her other side, a slender half-Klingon with an apt mind, a fierce temper, and a capacity for passion beyond that any human woman could dream of possessing. He had seen her in her passion, seen her....
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....as he stepped into the turbolift, he saw her standing beside the door, poised almost as if she were ready to pounce. The door hissed shut as he turned to face her, startled. "What are you doing here, Lieutenant?" he demanded, worry -- for her, for the ship -- making the tones harsher than they might have been otherwise. "I thought you wanted help in Engineering."
"I couldn't stand to stay there any more." Her eyes were wild, her body taut. "I couldn't stand to walk around there and see them staring at me...staring like zombies. It's like I'm the last person alive down there. It's horrible, Chakotay. *Damn* the Botha! " Her right hand knotted into a fist, punching against the turbolift wall -- then opening to join the left in covering her face.
"I understand," he said, empathy and fear tightening his own throat. "But it's no better on the bridge, I'm afraid. And we need you in Engineering to set up the resonance burst." The resonance burst was the best chance of dispelling the all-consuming hallucinations the Botha were inflicting on the crew. Chakotay stepped forward, gently drawing B'Elanna's hands from her face. "Come on, B'Elanna. We're depending on you. Don't fail us now." His own hands closed over her slim strong shoulders, firmly. "Don't fail *me* now."
She shook her head and looked away, muscles working in his grip as if she were trying to pull free. But he held on, though the effort took all of his not-inconsiderable strength -- and after a few achingly long moments, he was rewarded by the feel of B'Elanna steadying herself beneath his hands.
He had leaned on her more than once, back in their Maquis cell. She had never failed him then, and she did not fail him now. When she looked up at him he saw, with no little pride, that while the fear was still in her eyes, the wildness was vanished. "Deck 11," she said quietly, and he felt the lift begin to move.
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Looking back, he knew that the Bothan (or had there been more than one? They never *had* been able to determine that) must have taken him the moment he'd entered the lift. B'Elanna, the *real* B'Elanna, had never left Engineering, never come to the bridge, never....
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....reached for his hand, coiling her fingers tightly around his own, just as she had when, not so very long ago, they'd waited for the ship-twisting creature to pass through Voyager, pass through *them*. As it had on that previous occasion, the contact steadied him, and he squeezed her hand in return, attempting to share that comfort. Gods, he was glad that she was here, that she was strong, that she was all right; the thought that she might have ended up like those hollow-eyed others he'd left on the bridge was enough to twist his gut. Now he could protect her, she could protect him, and together they would be safe, and keep the ship safe as well. "It'll be all right, B'Elanna," he promised, squeezing her hand again.
"I know it will," she answered certainly, "as long as we're together." He looked down at her then, at her upturned face and the chocolate eyes that met his own with confidence and absolute trust, and -- and something else?
"B'Elanna?" he said, disconcerted. The look on her face....it was too much like a look he longed to see on her face -- longed to see, and despaired of ever seeing.
"It's all right, Chakotay," she said, expression unchanged, tone soft. "We're together. And that's the way I want it."
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Chakotay was grateful that his complexion kept the others in the ready room from seeing the way the hot blood rushed to his cheeks at the memory. His feelings for Torres were something he'd confided in no one, something he'd barely admitted to himself. He felt violated, used, that the Bothan had drawn them from his mind so effortlessly, and turned them against him so effectively.
He risked a glimpse at Torres, there beside the captain and apparently completely focused on her. Gods, what a woman B'Elanna was: strong, capable, growing, every day more the extraordinary person he'd always known she could be. Every day more beautiful.
Every day more worthy of someone better than the middle-aged fool whose name must be a byword, on Voyager, for bad judgment in relationships.
B'Elanna's eyes flicked briefly to his, and he looked away. But he had not looked away then....
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Chakotay's heart leaped in his chest, to hear those words in the low, husky voice of B'Elanna Torres -- and the very reaction told him that this moment was not, *could not*, be real. Janeway had seen her fianc�, Harry his girlfriend, Tuvok his wife. So Chakotay --
So Chakotay now saw his own heart's desire.
Janeway had refused to yield to her vision. Chakotay must refuse to yield to his own; the lives of his crewmates depended on it. Wrenching his hand from the one that held it, he said softly, "You're not B'Elanna." The words were ashes in his throat.
"I'm the B'Elanna you want me to be," she breathed into his ear as her lithe, strong body pressed against his. Gods help him, he knew what he knew, but she felt so good, looked and smelled and sounded so *right* that he almost doubted his own mind. "This is what you want, isn't it? The secret you've been keeping?"
Even if he could have lied, his own body betrayed him at her touch, and he knew beyond doubt that she could tell. In a last, instinctive effort at resistance, he tried to push her away, but her Klingon strength, this time, proved greater than his own. Just as (he realized, despairing) in his mind he'd always known it could.
"You want us to be together," she purred, and the force of her kiss pressed his head back into the turbolift wall. "And we can be." Without transition they were in his quarters, and she was pressing him backward, onto the bed, and pouncing on him.
"I have to get to Engineering," he whispered, one small thread of his mind struggling to hold onto its purpose.
She ignored the words, growling, "I want *you*. I've *always* wanted you." Then she sank her teeth into his cheek, drawing blood, marking and claiming him in a gesture out of deepest fantasy. "And you....you feel the same way."
He couldn't fight it any longer, and no longer remembered why he should. "Yes," he rasped, and rolled her onto her back as he captured her lips in a breath-stealing kiss.
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*****
He hadn't been able to look B'Elanna in the eye since that day. She hadn't sought him out, either; while he was grateful for that fact, he hoped it didn't mean that she had somehow sensed his inner turmoil and its cause. Some said Klingons could smell desire; he would be mortified if that were the case now.
Give him another week, two weeks, three weeks, and surely he would have his wayward thoughts, and feelings, and pheromones under control. A week, two weeks, three weeks, and he could go back to his old relationship with B'Elanna, go back to thinking of her as only his friend and his junior officer. All he had to do was keep away from her for that long....
Of course, it was with a contrary's own luck that he had barely registered that thought when he heard the captain say, "So I think that you and Lieutenant Torres would be the best choice for that assignment. Don't you agree, Commander?"
To be continued...
