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Title: False Madonna
Category: VAO . It's late, past visiting hours, past my bedtime, and I have still no idea how I ended up, standing here in front of Sickbay, the eternal yellow light glowing down at me and my hands hanging useless by my sides. Adrenaline floats wearily through my veins, and I find myself on the balls of my heat, nearly hopping with an emotion I cannot define. I raise a hand, clammy, trembling, and it drops to my hips, limp; I can't go in. I can't make that step inside, can't quite move myself to step beyond this grey barrier. Screw Tom. Screw his concern, his intensity, his charm. Screw the ache in his eyes as he turned to me in the dim corridor, whirling around, his eyes snapping at me in the semi-lit darkness. "I need you to talk to her. I need you to get her to listen to me, Harry. You're the only one she trusts, the only one who can reach her." My throat constricted and my head swam as I suddenly found myself with the desire to scream. Prison ships, time travel, losing everyone I ever knew, the Borg, even the homicidal holodeck charecters I can handle, but not. . . But not B'Elanna Torres, alone, afriad, perhaps dying, hurt by the very man who is begging me to help her. Don't ask me to do that. But I went. I did it; I'm here, because you don't say no to Tom Paris. Perhaps, someday, I will look upon this whole wretched affair as an adventure. This whole voyage, this whole screwed up thing as a time of greatness, of youth and pleasure. I may even look back upon this with a sense of affection. Nostalgia. My first venture with Starfleet, twisted horribly awry, yet an experience that will never be forgotten as long as I live. The great unknown, stretching before us, waiting to be traveled, explored, plumbed, the joy of life, of friends. The Captain, Chakotay, Tuvok, the finest officers, the finest people I have ever known. Tom, prankster, handsome, golden blonde and perfect, with his lightning reflexes and his easy laughter. B'Elanna, dark, wondrous, so beautiful it hurts. Like raktijino: bitter, swirling, a brown so deep as to be black, and just faintly sweet around the edges, blending with the sourness, and keeping me awake at night. I don't remember what happened, how precisely she got to Sickbay, mangled, bleeding, with that look in her eyes. The chiming of transporters, and the grind of sand, pebbles beneath my boots as we scaled that mountain, and my tricorder cheeping happily as it spat back news of a dilithium deposit. Tom's voice, like languid honey, weaving through the air, and the image of B'Elanna, standing on top of the boulder, her hair back in the wind, a slow grin lifting her into a smile, and the green, fertile valleys spread beneath us. I could tuck, far away, into my mind, the look in her eyes as Tom brushed her shoulder. Tom making a soft, off-hand comment, half-under his breath about how Sandra would love this, about how she'd love hiking through that forest. Then a blur of voices, of furious geustures as B'Elanna whirled on her heel, rounding on him like a dragon provoked, angry. A whorl of motion as they stepped up to each other, screaming. She was too possesive. He needed some lessons in maturity. She needed to go back to kindergarten, to learn about sharing. Kindergarten? He needed to realize he was not god's gift to women. He grabbed her arm, and she slapped him. And somehow, she slipped as she screamed something at him. I remember, clearly, her body bouncing from rock to jagged rock as she flopped, rolled, flew down the rocky precipce, and the icy stillness as she lay on the bottom, like a discarded toy. The doctor said something about the possibilty paralysis beyond his ability to heal. Concussion. Broken bones. Internal damage, punctured lung, internal bleeding, torn stomach, crushed kidneys, damaged spleen, hemmorhage, but these are easily cured with a regenerator, some nanites and a shot from the miraculous hypospray. But there was something about paralysis, a crushed vertabrae; very possible paralysis beyond the Doctor's ability to heal, a cripple from the waist down. And now I stand outside Sickbay, more scared than I was on that prison ship, the terror cold in my bones. What *is* protocol when one visits a woman, when the woman probably doesn't wnat to see you? Especially when one has bad news? Words that can offer no comfort? Go in? Knock? Run? I draw another deep, painful breath and am surprised that it sounds suspiciously like a sob. I wipe my waterey eyes with the back of my uniform, and step in, conscious of the thin carpet. Her back is to the door, and in a dark, dimmed corner, behind a curtain, she's curled into herself, barely a ripple in the vast expanse of the biobed. I cross quietly, and lean slowly, cautiously over her still form. This, after all, Cheif Engineering Officer Lt. B'Elanna Torres, proud, beautiful, strong, independent, untouchable. . . waxen. Afraid. And injured. She looks so delicate now, so fragile, all the harshness sucked out of her face, and the ferocity out of her posture. Her lashes lay thick, beautiful across a recently-thin cheek, and her mouth puckers slightly, gently. . . Her face drawn in pain, with fear even in sleep. My chest tightens, and I turn away, afraid, afraid of her, afraid of the pall of sickness that permeates this room...afraid of my raging emotions. She has left a PADD on the floor, glittering, tossed to the floor, dropped from her limp hands. I pick it up between trembling hands, wanting to simply set it on the table because undoubtedly, undoubtedly, Harry-boy, it contains information, medical statistics that the Doctor gave B'Elanna and things she doesn't want people to know. Least of all you, Harry-boy. But my eyes--I look at it, I glance down and I see, in glowing yellow letters, "...18% feasibility of successful implantation; 78% permanent paralysis; 99.948% probabilty of loss of most if not all feeling in legs if spinalblock is neutralised...." And I shove it face down onto the crowded medical cart, not car ing that I've upset a hypo, tilted a silver flask of some valuable and fragile material. I feel sullied, dirty,like I've snuck a peek into the depth of her soul--which I have, by reading this most intensely personal of messages, the darkest knells, prying into a secret that was never meant for another, not one meant for me to share. She stirs, sighs, and I jump guiltily. She turns toward me, her beautiful hair lackluster and hanging, her cheeks hollow, the dark, coffee, life brightness of her eyes glazed with pain as she tries to focus, the skin beneath them transparent and shadowed with bruise. She is beautiful and tragic, and I bite, hard, the inside of my lip to keep from crying out at this injustice. Her eyelids flutter, her mouth moves silently, puckering, smoothing, puckering smoothing as she forces out a sound from her parched throat. "Tom?" she whispers, stretching her hand out, blindly reaching for the man she assumes to automatically be there. I take her hand, and she starts, freezes, like an animal caught in the headlights. I see her shoulders droop, then straighten,as she knows, just from touch, that I am not the one she seeks. "Tom!" she cries, emptily, under her breath, as her eyelids slide backward like a newborns, the breath slipping out her puckered mouth like the soul passing through a dying corpse. She cries his name softly, struggling, pushing herself up with pale elbows that protrude from her blue-grey gown like naked chicken. Her thin chest heaves and she explodes into a dry racking cough, leaves rattling. "Lanna, Lanna," I whisper. "It's all right, all right, calm down, take a deep breath, it's me, Lanna, me, Harry, I'm here, here, take a deep breath, relax, please, please? c'mon, breath deep, it's all right..." And I'm babbling, talking like an idiot, as my teeth clench and I fight the nausea that chruns in my body, and my hands shake. My hands hover near her hunched back, uncertain to touch her or not,even as her chest trembles and her entire frame trembles underneath the strength of the death noises that rattle through her body, and oh god, fuck you Tom Paris, fuck you that she shivers like a dried leaf in the November wind, fuck you that it's your name she calls out of her sleep, that she knows your touch from all others, fuck you fuck you. "'Lanna..." My voice dies away on this syllable as I watch her shoulders lean back against the bedrest, like a tired spring, her mouth open and gently panting for air. "Harry....Where's...How's....Tom?" she whispers, her face swinging up to me, her eyes dark, concerned. "How is he....?" "He's fine. Tired, exhausted and..." My voice pauses, as I am uncertain, unsure whether I should tell her, tell her and rip me open to see the light that explodes across her face. "He misses you. He's sorry." And the supernovae comes, slamming into me and knocking the breath out of me, replacing it with the edge of a sad whimper. I hang on to the edge of the bed, the railing cutting into my hands, as I rock back on my feet, desperately fighting to keep the rage, the tears from boiling out and scalding the two of us. "How are....you?" My voice cracks as it has not done since I was sixteen and a walking pimple. "I'm fine, Fly. . . " The smile fades from her face as the edges of a tattered memory flutter from her tired hands. "I'm fine, Harry. Fine. Looking like shit, I'm sure, but fine." She cracks a grin back up at me. I wanted to laugh. She was beautiful, in her own, strange, eerie way, with her cheeks flushed with heat, her mouth softly open and her eyes shining back up at me like moist jewels, and the delicateness....The moth's-wing beauty, glowing out of that deathly ill face. /You look beautiful/ She freezes, and I am terrified that I have actually said it, that I have blurted it out, but then she relaxes. I realize, sadly, that she has not heard seen me during this encounter at all, that I am like a ghost tugging at the edge of her consciousness, a consciousness revolving around my fair-heared Flyboy. I want to laugh again. She inhales, a movement, and then she murmurs, "Why did he send you here?" I smile. "He wants to let you know he still cares." It doesn't hurt. It really doesn't, stated like that. She mistakes the intent of that grin, and she takes my hand, covering it in her own. "I never doubted that." And she sounds like a martyr, Tom, did you know that? Like a saint, beaming down from a wall hanging, dressed in blue, pale face surrounded by an aureole of gold, with a small chapel devoted to her, drooping rose in a pink font. For a woman's who has told me she has never prayed and has never wanted to, a woman who has never entered a cathedral and be struck by the prescence of God, she looks like one of His angels. Her face shines softly back at me, and standing here, I can shut my eyes and breath in the inscence. Her face, like a composition in pastels: eyes the shade of a polished sky. And her face, soft, sad, tired, like the Virgin Mary, framed by folds of the sky, soft hands held out, her eyes forgiving, brimming with love. Gentle, like everything else, her fire smothered by the coldness paralyzing her body, as if the blaze had seared through her and left these wisping grey ashes fluttering down in the still air. I want B'Elanna back, you fuck. I want the selfishness, I want the pain, the little girl crying in the empty cold room, the laughter like hot brandy in my mouth, I want the life to course through her again like floodwaters pouring through the narrow banks. This is a travesty, a mockery of of fire, calling a flickering candle the wildfire that it was once; I want the joys and the depressions back, becuase that it her soul, you mindless shithead, all of it. I want the woman from the Ocampan Hospital back, even if she got love you, but I want Maquis back. "Starfleet?" she says, suddenly, touching my cheek with one cold hand. I relish the sound of her mouth forming the name that is especially hers and mine. "Yeah?" I mutter, my breath blowing into the pale heel of her hand, relishing the feel of her skin against my hand. "Do something for me, will you?" "Anything." A grin, now, even I know what she's going to ask. "Watch after Tom, will you, Starfleet? Make sure he's....all right? That he eats and he sleeps and he goes on shift, that he..." Her eyes swing up at me-- An awkward pause, as I fumble for words, struggling for the sounds that I know I'm supposed to create from the rust of my throat. I grasp for the mask of a concerned face; I can hear the familiar litany forming behind my retina, like the teleprompter. /You'll be fine, the doctor will be able to clone your spinal cord/, that /Tom'll be fine./, a hundred phrases fitting and eloquent. "Okay," I say instead and squeeze her hand, so thin and dry in mine. And B'Elanna. . . B'Elanna smiles and closes her eyes. *end
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