Archive of Our Own ^beta

At 0235, the Mess Hall is usually deserted. Or at least that’s what B’Elanna told herself after yet more tossing and turning on her bed. Better to try her luck and blow some of her replicator rations on actual coffee, rather than wait for sleep that won’t come. She’ll be barely functional for the start of her shift either way.

It sounded innocent enough, and yet when the doors slide open to admit her in, the Mess Hall isn’t as completely dark as B’Elanna expected, but rather suffused with the night-shift energy saving lighting. One table near the porthole, opposite to the galley, is occupied by someone in a science uniform. B’Elanna sees them slowly turning towards the entrance—she recognizes Dax by her long ponytail of sleek, dark brown hair. She’s nursing a steel mug in her left hand, and greets B’Elanna with a small wave.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

B’Elanna looks down to her red pajamas, grimacing. She has miscalculated her little escapade. Now she’ll probably have to make some small talk, and with a fully-uniformed Dax nonetheless.

“Something like that,” B’Elanna replies noncommittally.

She quickly strides in front of the replicators, away from Dax’s scrutiny, and orders a coffee, decaf, all the while considering her options.

She could just pick up her own steel mug and leave, though that would be rude. B’Elanna doesn’t entirely mind the science officer, and she has certainly come to understand her a lot better since their shuttle misadventure, but—Dax still gives her the impression of someone who is able to guess B’Elanna’s innermost thoughts, and it’s unsettling at the best of times. She doesn’t even have the excuse of concentrating on anti-grav sailing in the holodeck, in order to avoid talking to her about anything too important.

Still, the alternative is hurrying back to her quarters and having her coffee there, alone with her own thoughts, and likely just as unable to sleep. The thought makes her head swim in an ocean of exhaustion, and she almost sways on her feet.

B’Elanna picks up the mug from the replicator and turns around. “Mind if I join you?”

Dax breaks into a smile and she gestures with her left hand to the seat in front of her.

Up close, Dax’s expression is tighter than it looked from the other side of the Mess Hall. The spots on her temples are in stark relief against her very pale complexion. B’Elanna hesitates before sitting, cringing internally at not having considered that Dax might have been just as tired as she is.

Her observation skills don’t seem impaired, though. Dax smirks at her hovering and says, “I thought we agreed that I don’t bite?”

B’Elanna rolls her eyes, and finally sits down, setting the mug of steaming coffee carefully on the tabletop in front of her.

“Long day?” she says, a peace offering.

Dax nods, her eyes fluttering close for a moment. “I lost track of time, then beta shift needed some help with some sensors not responding.”

“We’re well into the night shift,” B’Elanna observes.

“Had to crawl through some jefferies tubes before I finally found the source of the problem.”

“What was it?”

“A power coupling near the deflector dish hatch was acting up. It was an easy repair, luckily.”

B’Elanna frowns. “That’s a long crawl. And something the Engineer staff should take care of.”

“Beta shift was busy trying to compensate for the strange readings,” Jadzia says, waving her left hand lightly, “and I had nothing better to do anyway. I hope you don’t mind.”

She does mind, at least some. For many months B’Elanna had been convinced that her post as Chief Engineer was just a temporary gamble on Captain Janeway’s part, and that it could be taken away at any moment. That loyal Starfleet officers like Carey and Dax were looking over her shoulders and that at the first sign of B’Elanna’s divided loyalties, or any hint of her inexperience, they would report back to the captain, and take her place. She had soon learned that Carey wasn’t too fond of responsibility, and that he was content to let B’Elanna take the lead. Dax was a very different animal though, one far more difficult for B’Elanna to decipher—but who could in turn decipher B’Elanna much more easily. Dax was even fluent in tlhIngan Hol.

Her own train of thought catches B’Elanna off-guard. That was her old assessment of Dax. She really doesn’t mean any harm, B’Elanna knows that now, though she can be just as annoyingly cheerful as she is helpful. Why is it even coming up again now?

Oh right, the insomnia.

“I don’t really mind, no,” B’Elanna forces herself to say. “Though now I’m wondering who on my staff is slacking off on maintenance.”

“It might’ve been just a random fluke.”

“We haven’t encountered anything major ever since we’ve left Enara Prime’s orbit.”

“True enough,” Dax concedes.

Dax leans back on her chair, crosses her legs and sips from her mug, turning to her right towards the porthole, and the pleasantly ordinary warp stream outside of it. B’Elanna looks down to her own mug. She hasn’t even tasted it yet—an experimental sip reassures her that the decaffeinated flavor of the recipe is not completely dreadful.

B’Elanna is grateful for the silence. For all her fretting about Dax’s dangerously keen eye, it is nice to not have to spell out that she doesn’t feel like talking. It is pleasant to have her coffee in the Mess Hall, and not have to be alone while also not being asked to fulfill any particular social obligation. Dax simply keeps her eyes fixed on the outside, and her hands busy on her mug, which B’Elanna suspects is now empty.

As the minutes pass though, discomfort takes the place of easy companionship. Dax doesn’t move, doesn’t make any attempt at conversation. Even more worrying, she doesn’t crack any unfunny jokes. It is not at all how B’Elanna is used to seeing her in the Mess Hall, usually surrounded by one or more people, senior officers or crewmen alike, regaling one of the many stories her long memory granted her to a raucous audience. She appears—strangely aloof, her face not betraying anything, the faint starlight reflecting in her eyes the only suggestion that time is still moving around her.

Something similar to the misery that brought B’Elanna to the Mess Hall must be among Dax’s reasons to be here as well. Which also means that B’Elanna should probably make an effort to inquire about it. So much for a quick outing. She downs the meager remains of her coffee, not as fortifying a drink as B’Elanna hoped, and she clears her throat.

“I’m guessing there’s a reason why you haven’t gone back to your quarters either yet.”

Dax turns her head to glance back at her, blinking. She leans towards the table, placing her empty mug on it. “Sorry about that. I got lost in thought.”

“I imagine that must happen a lot to you,” B’Elanna says.

Dax's brow furrows, a small smile on her lips. “How so?”

“Well, you’ve said you lost track time on your shift as well. Plus, you know. All your—hosts. All those memories,” B’Elanna concludes awkwardly, gesticulating with her right hand.

Dax’s smile widens considerably, in the kind of mischievous expression that B’Elanna is much more used to associate with the Trill officer in front of her. Dax leans with both elbows over the table, and B’Elanna braces herself.

“I didn’t know you thought so much about me and my past hosts,” she says, grinning.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself. I only mentioned them because—”

“Because?”

B’Elanna blinks, then averts her eyes from Dax’s probing curiosity. She has been thinking about joined Trills, about carrying someone else’s memories. She’s considered how likely that the comparison that is so obvious in her head will sound stupid and inappropriate if she gives voice to it. And now Dax is joking about it.

“Nevermind,” B’Elanna grumbles, keeping her eyes on the tabletop between them.

“Come on, B’Elanna. You’ve raised the topic, you can’t blame me for catching the bait.”

B’Elanna closes her eyes, suddenly weary to the bone. It is as if the insomnia of the last few days has finally caught up with her, like a wave finally crashing against the shore. She has been moving around the ship as if sleepwalking, as if commanded by forces she can’t understand, with no regard for the obvious consequences of her actions. She is doing the same now, with Dax. And Dax, just like B’Elanna, must know the reason behind it. There is no way she doesn’t know.

“Can’t you guess?” she murmurs.

There’s a pause, then a small, somber, “I see.”

B’Elanna opens her eyes. Dax has retreated again to the back of her chair, frowning with what is, again, unusual intensity for her.

It occurs to B’Elanna only then that this conversation was probably a long time coming—that Dax might be in the Mess Hall so late because she is troubled by the same things B’Elanna is. Their disastrous contact with the Enarans, and the reality of their history.

B’Elanna hasn’t been able to sleep since they left Enara Prime, though she’s unsure if her anxiety is due more to the possibility that she might experience Korenna's memories again, or that she might not any longer after the transfer with Jessen. A transfer she has no way of knowing whether it will have worked or not.

“You’ve been thinking about it too, haven’t you. About the Enarans,” B’Elanna says softly.

“You’re probably the one among the two of us who has the most to say about them,” Dax counters, raising an eyebrow at her.

“You haven’t asked.”

Dax averts her eyes, clasps her hands together in her lap. “I suppose I got distracted filling in old star charts and repairing power couplings.”

“Dax.”

“Aw, no more nickname? I’m hurt.”

Even her transparent attempt to change the subject is half-hearted, which only manages to irritate B’Elanna more. Her own fault for even bringing up the subject.

“Right, the only way to have a serious conversation with you is being stuck in a freezing shuttle. Remind me to lower the environmental controls next time I meet you, Spots,” B’Elanna retorts, moving to get up from her chair.

“Wait, don’t go,” Dax says.

B’Elanna turns her attention back to the other woman, now looking up at her with obvious remorse. Her contrition seems genuine, at least. B’Elanna sits back down on the chair.

“You’re right,” Dax admits. “I have been thinking about the Enarans, and about what happened to you. I don’t know how much of it would be helpful for you to hear, though.”

B’Elanna groans in frustration. “At this point I’m open to anything. I can’t sleep, I can barely eat, I go through my day in a haze, because I can’t stop thinking about someone else’s memories,” B’Elanna says, too tired for anything but complete honesty. She swallows, holding Dax’s gaze. “If this is anything similar to being a joined Trill, I don’t know how you deal with it.”

Dax offers her a small, understanding smile, before returning her attention to her hands. “It’s not surprising that you’re feeling that way, given how you came across those memories. A Trill wouldn’t be holding up much better than you are.”

B’Elanna exhales. She places her right on the tabletop, then curls it into a fist. “So now what. Should I just—wait until it passes? Until I forget? Until I am just like any other Enaran, pretending it didn’t happen?”

It comes out more angry than B’Elanna expected, and Dax looks back at her with raised eyebrows. Yes, she is angry. That emotion she knows so well, her default reaction to having no recourse. She’d thought Dax might have answers, but she doesn’t. No one does. It doesn’t make B’Elanna feel any better.

“I—” Dax begins, haltingly, and B’Elanna is ready to leave if it’s more platitudes. Dax first averts her eyes, brow furrowing, then resolutely meets B’Elanna’s eyes again. “What I meant was, I think you behaved admirably in a very, very difficult situation. I would never ask another Trill, or anyone else, to go through what you went through, with no warning and no training. And yet you still did the right thing.” Dax falters. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would’ve done in your place.”

“Oh,” B’Elanna says, taken aback by Dax’s sudden intensity. She lowers her head to focus on the gray tabletop again.

Neither of them speak for a while. B’Elanna has no idea what to say. Surely Dax is joking? Hell, B’Elanna’s never even been a true Starfleet officer. She’d always thought this was the kind of choice that was supposed to come easily to Starfleet people.

“I might have done the right thing,” B’Elanna whispers. “But I’m not sure how much that will count on Enara Prime.”

“You didn’t let the Enarans forget or ignore it. That already counts for a lot, even if you won’t see the effects of your actions in this life.”

“That’s—very pragmatic,” B’Elanna retorts, wishing she could share Dax’s certainty.

“You must’ve believed that it counted yourself, or you wouldn’t have chosen to confront them,” Dax points out.

“I guess I did. But still, I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I feel it might drive me crazy.”

“For what it’s worth, it would drive me crazy too. But you’ve done your part, and it’s now the Enarans’ turn to finally deal with it. Hopefully, without involving blameless bystanders,” she concludes, her lips pressing together in obvious disapproval.

B’Elanna blinks. “You sound pretty angry.”

“That’s because I am,” Dax says, with a smile that is anything but reassuring. “Angry. And disappointed, I suppose.” she adds. “But it has nothing to do with you.”

B’Elanna is now at a complete loss. “What do you mean?”

Dax sighs, looks down to the tabletop, takes a big, shaky breath, as if reaching a conclusion. She brings her palms flat on her thighs.

“On Trill—there is so much reverence for the symbionts, and our ability to commune with them and their memories. We bitterly compete for the privilege, and in doing so we prepare for it, for the joining. Sometimes I think—it’s not so much the meditation practice, or the physical fitness, that makes Initiates suitable and allows them to not be overwhelmed by all the memories a symbiont carries. It’s that the process is so unforgiving, by the time the joining comes nothing can phase you anymore.”

B’Elanna has no clue where she’s going with this, but she lets Dax continue.

“Did you know we used to keep the Trill symbionts a secret from the rest of the Alpha Quadrant?” she asks, not meeting B’Elanna’s eyes.

“I remember that,” B’Elanna says. She’d heard and participated in so many discussions about it at the Academy, when the Trill symbionts had only recently become common knowledge. What it meant for the Federation if a planet could hide that much from the rest of the members.

“There still are—many secrets surrounding the symbionts,” Dax continues, hesitant. “Some that I found out about only weeks before Captain Janeway invited me to board Voyager. Nothing quite as horrible as what Korenna had witnessed,” she quickly adds, “but still upsetting. And dangerous. Back then I thought, how is it possible that we venerate memories so much, and then we try to rein them in, to control them so tightly? But as time went on, far away from Trill as we are, I started wondering. So much of Trill history has revolved around conflicts on who had the privilege of joining, and for all that the Symbiosis Commission tells the planet that things have changed, that they’ve assumed a completely scientific approach to tending to the Mak’ala pools, I don’t think that it’s as neutral as they claim. And ultimately Initiates, and joined Trills, are just a part of the same apparatus that claims to protect and care for the symbionts and their memories, but that in reality only fosters silence. Whether we like it or not.” Dax pauses. She grabs the empty mug in front of her with both hands and brings her closer to her, holding it tightly. Then she eyes B’Elanna meaningfully, her eyes set in a hard expression. “The Enarans may be more casual about their memory transference. A bit too casual, if you ask me. But not so different, ultimately, from Trills,” she concludes bitterly.

Dread fills B’Elanna. Dax is being deliberately vague, and yet the picture she paints is a far cry from what B’Elanna has always heard and read about the Trill homeworld. It is a surprising revelation. She had no clue that Dax had such a disenchanted perspective on her homeworld.

“I had no idea. That’s—terrible.”

Dax offers her a rueful smile, before returning her attention to the mug in her hands. “Don’t get me wrong, being joined is what I always wanted. I wanted it so much, I refused to accept the rejection from the Program.” She frowns. “I'm Jadzia Dax now, and I regret nothing about who I am. But with what happened before I boarded Voyager, then getting lost in the Delta Quadrant, and now the Enarans… I think—I think I’m uncertain about what that means for the first time since my joining.” She blinks, then looks to B’Elanna again, as if realizing she’s still in the same room with her. “Sorry. As I said, this probably isn’t very helpful.”

B’Elanna shakes her head at Dax’s sudden self-deprecation. It’s a night of firsts for sure. She’s never really seen Dax like this, much less hear her admit to having doubts. Looking down to her own hands on the table, B’Elanna thinks back to all the times she’s seen Dax and the captain bantering on the bridge, or in the ready room. The way they always seemed so impossibly distant to B’Elanna, both so much larger than life, both carrying the weight of their responsibilities with grace and levity. B’Elanna has never been very good at replicating that poise. And yet now she’s in the Mess Hall at night, in her pajamas, listening to Dax, so much older and more experienced than B’Elanna could ever hope to become—and Dax is the one who is uncertain about her place in the universe.

“Actually, I think it helps,” B’Elanna says, feeling herself smirk. She keeps her eyes on her hands, flexes them, splaying her fingers out on the tabletop. “I, uh, might have some experience about not being sure of my place. It’s kind of reassuring to know that you can feel the same way.” She pauses. “Maybe I’m not completely crazy for being so affected since we left Enara Prime.”

Before B’Elanna has any time to react, Dax reaches out with her left hand to firmly grab B’Elanna’s right. B’Elanna starts at the unexpected physical contact, and looks up to meet Dax’s gaze. She’s utterly serious, and it pins B’Elanna firmly into place.

“B’Elanna, you aren’t crazy. What you went through—” She shakes her head. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t know what I would’ve done in your place. I don’t know that I would’ve had the strength to confront the entire Enaran delegation as you did.”

It’s impossible to break away from Dax’s fierce regard. B’Elanna swallows dry, her heart beating faster. “I had to do it. I had to. But it was awful,” she adds, voice cracking under the weight of her admission. “No one believed me.”

“The captain did. Jessen did. I believed you too, and so did the rest of the crew.”

Dax has big hands, tall as she is, and she easily envelops B’Elanna’s in a cool but not unpleasant hold. B’Elanna is reminded of their discussions about body temperatures, back during their shuttle accident. How Trills are more tolerant of the cold than the average Klingon, but joined Trills still cannot afford to go under a certain threshold. Are the memories from her symbiont similar for Dax? She can withstand more than most perhaps, but there probably are things that would still break her. B’Elanna hopes to never find out what they are.

“I wish Jora Mirell had found a different way to finally tell the truth,” Dax continues, unaware of B’Elanna’s thoughts. “The weight you have to carry now—I can only imagine how hard it is. But it will get easier with time, and I don’t think you will ever forget it in the same way the Enarans tried to. You’ve already shown plenty more moral fiber than most of them.”

“I wish I could believe that,” B’Elanna hears herself saying. Her eyes sting, and she’s overwhelmed by shame at her own fragility, at her utter inability to keep it together, like a boulder in her chest.

“You will get through this, B’Elanna. Trust me, you can.” Dax squeezes her hand gently, driving home her point. “You’ve faced so much already, and got to the other side. I think you’re just really exhausted now, and that’s why everything seems impossible.”

B’Elanna snorts. Wearily, she says, “I really wish I could sleep. But I just toss and turn.” Like a petulant child, afraid of the dark.

“That makes two of us,” Dax replies drily.

Somehow the way she says it manages to pierce into B’Elanna’s awareness as the utter, incontrovertible truth. Her feelings aren’t so different from Dax’s. She’s not out of control, just like Dax isn’t. Only worn out. All of her shame and regret seems to deflate, and her lungs seem to draw in air again.

“Actually, I might have a solution for our predicament.”

B’Elanna turns to look back at Dax, eyebrows raised. “I’m listening.”

“I have a feeling you already turned down a lot of similar suggestions,” Dax says, with one corner of her mouth turning up. The sudden turn into her more usual mischievousness both calms and worries B’Elanna. “Especially from Paris. But I mean this sincerely. I think I would sleep better—and I do mean sleep —if I knew I wasn’t completely alone in my quarters.”

B’Elanna lets out a nervous chuckle at what she’s implying, heart-rate spiking again. “Dax, be serious.”

“I’m not joking,” she counters, raising her eyebrows. “I’ve tried the Doctor’s sleeping aids, I’ve tried working late so that I would only be able to crash on my bed, but I still slept poorly. I’m kind of at the end of my rope here.”

B’Elanna looks down at their still joined hands, dizzy from her own fatigue and shock at the request. Dax must be joking, right? What has gotten into her, all of a sudden?

“So you think a sleepover is the answer?”

She shrugs. “It’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet. Unless you tried it and it didn’t work,” she adds with a smirk, earning a glare from B’Elanna.

The idea of dozing off with someone at her side suddenly takes hold of B’Elanna’s consciousness. When was it the last time that happened? When they were all stranded on Halon IV, after Seska had stolen Voyager? She had slept among her staff, Harry nearby, on the hard ground and in freezing caves—just like she and Dax had huddled together in the cold, and had survived, while they waited for their shuttle’s nacelles to repolarize. B’Elanna holds her breath, then closes her eyes. She can almost feel it again, the awkwardness mixed with relief at not having to face her troubles alone. Dax’s hand wrapped around her own.

“You’re crazy,” B’Elanna murmurs, trying, and failing, to shut down her own ridiculous thoughts.

“You’ve told me that before,” Dax replies, not missing a beat.

B’Elanna rifles through her objections and fails to find any that stick. She’s been on the holodeck alone with Dax often enough. She won’t take advantage of B’Elanna. Is this really so different? Or is her judgment so impaired by exhaustion that she is not seeing the obvious warning signs?

She hears herself say, “So I just—what. Follow you into your quarters?”

Dax smirks, eyes glinting. “Well, you’re already dressed for the occasion.”

B’Elanna glances once again at her pajamas and can’t contain an embarrassed huff. “You’ve put me in a corner now,” she says.

At that, Dax hastily lets her hand go. “I’m sorry. I only meant to—”

“No, I get it, you’re trying to help, it’s just that—”

“It’s a bit too much.”

B’Elanna looks up again, and Dax is smiling at her, and in the low light B’Elanna can’t tell if the sad slant of it is only in her head.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Dax says gently, leaning onto the table top to get up. “Goodnight, B’Elanna.”

B’Elanna closes her eyes. Envisions herself entering her quarters again. Bed unmade, blanket half on the floor. Cold sheets. Three more hours of the red overhead lighting managing to seep into her consciousness from under her eyelids, even at the lowest setting.

“Jadzia, wait,” she says. Her name rolls awkwardly on B’Elanna’s tongue.

She looks over to her, and the woman in question turns back to B’Elanna, halfway towards the Mess Hall doors. Jadzia watches her, expectant.

“You won’t tell anyone about this,” B’Elanna stipulates.

“My lips are sealed,” she replies promptly, cracking a wide grin. She raises her left arm, holding her hand open towards B’Elanna.

B’Elanna huffs, and raises from her chair. “I’m sure we’ll manage to encounter half the crew on our way to Deck 8 anyway.”

“Relax. Not many people wander around during the night shift.”

B’Elanna walks over to her, feeling, as usual, dwarfed by Jadzia’s presence. Her hand is still outstretched towards B’Elanna, and she dithers—but the memory of Jadzia’s cool touch is still fresh in her mind. B’Elanna feels herself giving in to the promise of closeness as if she were collapsing, and finding a soft landing to catch her.

“I hope you’re right,” she murmurs, her eyes on their joined hands.