Archive of Our Own ^beta

Laren’s expression when the anomaly appeared in the hall was the last thing B’Elanna had expected. She knew by now that space was full of strange things, packed with mysteries and impossibilities. During this first year in the Delta Quadrant, she’d seen things she never could have explained.

But now there seemed to be a rift in midair, simply drifting in the corridor, and Ro Laren looked almost unimpressed.

B’Elanna stared from the flickering dull orange light to Laren and back again. “Don’t tell me you’ve seen one of these before.” Laren had been in Starfleet, but only briefly. Surely she couldn’t have been prepared for every remote possibility.

But then, people did say strange things happened around ships called Enterprise.

“No,” Laren said, but that didn’t ease B’Elanna’s mind. She didn’t look alarmed or even curious. She wasn’t particularly unimpressed, either. If anything, she looked resigned.

Then the thing struck.

There was no other way to explain it. At one moment, it was a tear in the air before them, a slit that might close at any moment. The next the edges seemed to unravel, lashing out in every direction. B’Elanna leapt back, but Laren wasn’t quite as quick. A rust-colored lightning bolt sliced through the air, striking her across the chest.

There was no time to think about her own safety. (In that moment, why would she bother?) B’Elanna caught Laren, pulling her back before she fell to the floor, scrambling on her feet and hands and backside as she did her best to pull Laren away from whatever that thing was. The one time her free hand wasn’t pulling her away was when she tapped her own badge. “B’Elanna to Security,” she gasped. “I need a force field on Deck 14, Section –” Fuck, fuck, what section were they in? Her thoughts raced, trying to remember. They had passed the reserve warp core – “Section 3.”

And was she far enough back? Would they both be trapped here? That mattered a hell of a lot less than whether whatever this thing was might reach the reserve core or the antimatter, but this wasn’t how she wanted to die.

It certainly wasn’t how she wanted Laren to die.

Then the air shimmered between her and the rift, and B’Elanna relaxed, slumping to the floor. Laren was dead weight on top of her, but at least she wasn’t dead weight; B’Elanna could hear her breathing, could feel an erratic heartbeat beneath her palm.

“Lieutenant Torres,” Tuvok said, his voice tense even for a Vulcan. He had already called her name, B’Elanna realized. She hadn’t noticed at all. “Are you injured? What happened?”

“I –”

The rift coiled in on itself and closed, as though it had never been in the first place.

“There was some sort of anomaly,” she said, forcing her voice to be steady. “Ensign Ro is injured.”

She didn’t need to say anything more. “I’ll transport you both to sick bay,” Tuvok said. He must have been preparing to do so from the moment B’Elanna contacted him; barely a second later, they were decks away, on the sick bay floor, and the Doctor cut himself off from asking what the medical emergency was to help her lift Laren onto a bed.

She had grown up hearing about the Prophets. She hadn’t grown up believing in them, not any more than a child could believe in anything, and that faith had been snuffed out quickly. She kept her D’ja pagh not for the Prophets but for her people. It was possible, surely, to be Bajoran and believe there was no greater guidance.

But in the dark cavern where Ro found herself, she could not help but think there was something more to the universe than what she had always allowed herself to believe.

For just a moment, she allowed herself that thought. Then she pushed herself to her feet, out of the genuflection she’d found herself in, and looked about.

Wherever she was, or wherever she seemed to be, she was underground. Stone walls rose around her, and the stone floor beneath her was rough, smoothed unevenly by the passage of many feet over many centuries. As far as she could see, there was no way out except for, perhaps, a hollow at the far end. The only light in the cavern came from there, and it glowed a dull red-orange that pulsed and flickered like a fire.

The sight of it terrified Ro, and she could not explain why.

She dug her fingernails into her palms, pressing hard enough that it hurt. It was an old trick she remembered from her youth, and she could still hear her mother’s voice whispering to her.

If it doesn’t hurt, darling, you’re only dreaming.

It still hurt, but there were other things in the world than dreams.

“This isn’t real,” she said. “I’m on the Federation ship Voyager. I’m on Deck 14, Section 3, and whatever has happened to me was only caused by some sort of anomaly coming from subspace onto our ship.” And while this was likely all happening in a single instant, Ro liked to imagine that B’Elanna was already hard at work figuring out what had happened and how she could prevent it from happening again.

No: first B’Elanna would have brought her to sick bay. Ro knew her well enough to predict that. They were Maquis, and while they might be loyal to the ship from necessity, they were first and foremost loyal to one another.

The thought warmed something in her that she hadn’t expected, something soft and bright that had been cold for too long. In another place, at a safer time, Ro would have smiled.

“This isn’t real,” she said again, more firmly than before, “and as soon as I regain consciousness, I will leave.”

No.

The voice was nowhere and everywhere at once, surrounding Ro, filling her mind. The moment the sound stopped, her head was clear, but she was left gasping, trembling, filled with the terrifying urge to fall to her knees yet again.

No. She wouldn’t. That was not who she was.

“You have me here,” she said carefully. Whatever had spoken to her possibly had her at its mercy, but she refused to say so aloud. “I assume you brought me on purpose?”

Silence. Ro’s heartbeat pounded in her ears, in her neck, in every part of her.

“What do you want from me?”

To show you.

Again that sense that she ought to fall to her knees. It was through sheer force of will that Ro kept herself on her feet. “Show me what?”

What will be.

It all came at her at once, then, a rush of images. A wormhole in the sky above Bajor, first blue and beautiful, then red and corrupted. Ships pouring out of it, filling the spaces between the stars. A shadow spreading across worlds.

And Bajor, her home, the place she would have torn out her heart for, burning.

Laren woke screaming.

B’Elanna had turned Engineering over to Lish. If anything strange happened on the ship, he was to contact her immediately, but she couldn’t convince herself to leave Laren’s side. The doctor had said there was nothing they could do except wait. He couldn’t even exactly say what was wrong. Whatever had happened to her had thrown her into some equivalent of REM sleep.

From the flickering neural patterns on the display, B’Elanna thought she must be having a bad dream.

If there was nothing to do but wait, that was what she would do, though she could hardly stand doing it even at the best of times. Every few minutes, she would think of something she ought to do, something that would require her attention. She would squeeze Laren’s hand in hers, knowing she would understand and would be doing her duty if their situations were reversed, and then would get to her feet and make her way to the door.

A few seconds later, she was back by Laren’s side, feeling guilty for having nearly left. The guilt was a miserable, nagging feeling, one she wished she could be rid of, but she didn’t know how. The easiest way was to just sit by Laren’s side, holding her hand, watching her sleep.

At least no one called for her. There was some consolation there.

And at least, when Laren woke, she could be by her side and could pull her close, trying to muffle her screams in her shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said, through some instinct she’d hardly known she had. “It’s all right, I’m here.”

The doctor was there as well. B’Elanna hadn’t even noticed his approach, and when he said, “Let me see her,” she almost jumped out of her skin.

She drew back, but only a little. She wanted Laren to still be able to see her, to know she hadn’t been left on her own. She would have still known she was safe – this was sick bay, and she was used to Starfleet ships even before she wound up on Voyager – but they were Maquis. They looked after each other.

Laren was sitting up by then, breathing hard as the doctor moved his tricorder carefully around her head and chest. For the first few seconds, she looked more terrified than B’Elanna had ever seen her, as though she were lost in some horrendous vision. Then, all at once, she seemed to come back to herself. Her gaze focused, and she turned, looking up at the doctor.

“What happened?”

“You tell me.” The doctor shut off the tricorder. “If you mean what happened to you physically, as far as I can tell, nothing. You’re in perfect health, or will be once your cortisol levels drop and your heart rate returns to its normal resting level. Mentally… I don’t know. All my scans showed were little different from a particularly intense and inescapable nightmare.”

“Little different,” B’Elanna said. “So there was something distinct about this.”

“There was,” the doctor said, “but subtle enough that I don’t know whether it would make any difference. I would have to run several tests, and the ethical considerations alone –”

Laren shuddered all over, drawing the attention of both of them. B’Elanna nudged her way past the doctor and grabbed Laren’s hand, pulling it toward her own heart. It was something another Bajoran had taught her, something that might not work at all because her own heart was racing wildly and might not calm Laren down at all.

But she had to do something. She had to try.

“It’s all right,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and even. She had never been particularly good at that. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

Laren shook her head, though not as though she meant to disagree. It was almost as though it didn’t matter either way.

“Something’s wrong on Bajor,” she said. Then she flung her arms around B’Elanna and buried her face in her shoulder.

Ro ordinarily worked the night shift, but Captain Janeway had offered to give her the night off. (It hadn’t been much of an offer, really. She had all but insisted.) Ro had surprised even herself by accepting. It would make things tight, but that was no surprise to anyone. By now, everyone on the ship was used to doing as much as they can with as little as possible.

Besides, the captain had said, for all anyone had known, they might have lost her. One night to let her rest was better than thousands or more of her gone forever.

She tried to spend the night in her quarters. Neelix had brought along some soothing tea and a cheerful little speech about how he was glad she was all right. Ro wondered whether something was wrong with her. It wasn’t just that the speech cheered her up a little, though she did feel strangely comforted after Neelix left. It was that the tea tasted good.

The thought was one that would normally make her laugh a little, especially if she shared it later on with B’Elanna. Tonight, though, it felt hollow, ungrateful. It was hard to find much to laugh at.

Something was wrong on Bajor.

Ro drained the tea. It tasted fine, but it didn’t do much to soothe her. For five minutes she sat on her bed, waiting for sleep to come, for even a hint of tiredness to reach her. When she realized there would be nothing, she rose and dressed again.

She wanted to find B’Elanna.

It wasn’t particularly difficult. Ro didn’t even have to ask the computer where she was. She only walked to B’Elanna’s quarters and rapped on the door. Knocking was their little signal, and it wasn’t long before the door slid open and B’Elanna pulled Ro into her arms.

The hug was quick, the kiss quicker still, and before long they were both nestled on B’Elanna’s bed. Ro was still in her uniform, but B’Elanna was only half-dressed. She must have been getting ready for bed when Ro came.

Maybe she had been sitting up, waiting for her arrival.

Normally – if there had ever been a time in her life that could be considered normal – Ro wouldn’t have let herself think like that. It wasn’t something about B’Elanna that encouraged it. Anyone who knew anything about either of them would see that they didn’t exactly encourage softness. It was something about this, about knowing that there were so few chances to connect with anyone that they had to take them where they could come. The other options were miserable: solitude or treachery. Suder or Seska.

Ro had chosen B’Elanna. B’Elanna had chosen Ro. Neither had any poetry in their soul, but both could see there was something beautiful in that.

“I thought you’d come by,” B’Elanna said. Her fingers were at the nape of Ro’s neck, toying with the roots of her hair. It had been getting long again, and she hadn’t summoned up the will to cut it. When they got back to the Alpha Quadrant, no one would recognize her.

If they got back.

If there was anyone left who might have known her.

“The doctor gave me a clean bill of health,” she said. “As long as I avoid any other subspace anomalies, I should be fine.” His words, not hers. She didn’t know who had programmed his exact sense of humor but she was certain she would never get along with them.

“We’ve got the sensors running constant sweeps,” B’Elanna said. “Nothing like that is getting through our shields if I can help it. I couldn’t work out how it appeared before my shift ended, but I’ve got the night crew working on it too. If anyone comes up with anything, I told them to wake me up immediately. I don’t trust anything like that on my ship.”

Maybe there was a silent addition of or near you. Maybe Ro only imagined that B’Elanna might have said something like that. She was used to adding words to silence. It had started as a way to feel less lonely and had never quite gone away.

“There’s something else bothering you,” B’Elanna said.

Ro closed her eyes, pressed her head a little closer against B’Elanna’s shoulder. It felt good to be near someone so warm, someone so determinedly alive. It was as though B’Elanna’s very blood whispered encouragement to her, as though something underneath her friend’s skin wanted her to thrive. “It didn’t feel like a hallucination,” she said. “It felt like a vision.”

B’Elanna tensed a little, or maybe she only echoed Ro’s own tension. It was impossible to tell. She knew that B’Elanna knew how she felt about faith; there were few others with whom she could speak about it. It was hard to imagine who else would understand, almost as hard as it had been to grasp why she had thought B’Elanna would in the first place.

“Do you think it might have been?” B’Elanna asked.

“A few years ago, I would have said no. I can’t be sure anymore.” Drifting through the galaxy was enough to make almost anyone agnostic. There was so much that couldn’t be explained with their level of technology and the time they had to study it. There certainly wasn’t enough that could be explained with her limited patience.

“So you think Bajor might really be in trouble?”

“I don’t know.” Ro sat up, but not enough to pull entirely away from B’Elanna’s touch. “Maybe it’s only echoes of neurotransmitters making me think it must be. It’s like waking from a dream that you still think is real. That’s all.”

She didn’t entirely believe it. From the look in B’Elanna’s eyes, neither did she.

“I have to get back,” she said. “I have to know. It’s my home.”

“And I’ll get you there,” B’Elanna said, pulling her back down. “No matter what it takes.”