In Fire and Ice
Aurora
Khan (CatchMyPoint2003@yahoo.com)
Star Trek: Voyager
Series:
Painful Secrets
Rating:
PG-13
Codes:
P/T, N
Disclaimer:
Paramount is paramount.
Historical
Note: This story takes place sometime after my previous
story, Painful Secrets, which can be found at http://www.oocities.org/auspicious17
It is not absolutely necessary to have read that story previously, but if
you read this story and don’t understand something, it can probably be explained
by reading my previous story.
Author’s
Notes: I’ve had this story idea in my head almost
since the end of Painful Secrets, and I had the first part of this story
on my hard drive for at least two years. It’s not really a story, even, just a
vignette. If there’s interest, I was thinking of doing B’Elanna’s POV also, so
let me know at CatchMyPoint2003@yahoo.com
The
title comes from not the perfume but the Robert Frost poem.
Synopsis:
How will the universe end?
From Tom Paris’ perspective.
People have told me all my life that I have eyes that can see through walls. Eyes that can bore into your soul and see everything about you in one glance, one fleeting instance. A nice compliment, but it isn’t true. I've always managed to astound myself with the ability of not being able to see what's staring me right in the face.
I had seen it coming for weeks. I had
registered all the signs…but I'd just tucked them far, far down in the recess
of my mind. I didn't want to think about it. I had always known what was going
on with my wife. I just didn't want to see it.
I would have gone on like that, for
days, months, who knows, maybe even years, if it hadn't been for Neelix.
Three days ago, Neelix came to my
quarters. I had just come off duty and was relaxing with a bowl of tomato soup
when Neelix rang the chime. He came in and stood nervously at the entrance,
tugging on the bottom of his gold security tunic uncomfortably.
"Hi, Tom," he greeted me
with a hesitant smile. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"Not at all. Come in, sit down,
take a load off. Can I get you anything to drink?"
"No, nothing." He sat down
and waited for me to slurp the last drops of my soup. His gaze wandered around
the room, taking in the various knick-knacks and photographs placed around the
room. B'Elanna and I had quite an extensive collection of holos, thanks to the
Doctor and his prolific pastime. Neelix picked up the frame closest to him. It
was one of the entire senior staff, along with Neelix and Seven. It had been
taken several years ago, in the mess hall,
as a present to Captain Janeway.
Neelix replaced the photo on the
stand and met my gaze. "Tom," he began slowly, "have you noticed
anything strange about B'Elanna lately?"
"Why do you ask?" I
replied. Answering a question with a question. Never a good sign. But Neelix
didn't seem to care.
"She didn't eat her pancakes
today in the mess hall." Neelix sounded so close to the edge of panic,
that the relative unimportance of the statement seemed an odd juxtaposition
with the tone of his voice.
I raised my eyebrows. "You
sound like you're announcing a warp-core breach, Neelix! She didn't eat her
pancakes--so? She was probably in a hurry, or maybe she just wasn't
hungry."
"Tom, you don't
understand!" Neelix jumped to his feet. "These were banana pancakes. B'Elanna told me a long
time ago that her grandmother used to make them for her and that they always
cheered her up. And the first time she asked me for them was after she found
out the Maquis were dead." Neelix's voice became softer. "You should
have seen her then, Tom. Her eyes...they were completely life-less. As if
something within her had disappeared, and no matter how hard she tried, she
couldn’t get that something back. And that's the same way she looks right now,
Tom. Like something inside her died."
Like
something inside her died, Neelix said. He had no idea how right he was.
After Neelix left, I realized that I
could no longer just ignore it. Pretend it didn't exist. Pretend as if I didn't
see what was wrong with her, with me, with us. Pretend as if were still Tom and
B'Elanna, the noisy couple on Deck Nine, Section Twelve.
The signs were everywhere that there
was trouble in our marriage. Usually, at the end of her shift, B'Elanna would
page me, and if it was possible, we would arrange to meet for dinner…or lunch,
or breakfast, depending on which shift she had just finished. She would always
page me, no matter what, even if only to just to say hi I realized that
B'Elanna hadn't paged me in weeks. I hadn’t paged her either. In fact, we
haven't eaten any meal together in the same amount of time. We hadn’t really
spoken for any length of time about anything.
She came home late that night. Her
shift had ended several hours ago and she’d spent the last few hours in the
holodeck – information I knew courtesy of Voyager’s computers. I lay in bed,
pretending to be asleep. I could hear the soft whisper of fabric against skin
as she pulled off her uniform. I waited to hear a drawer open, for her to pull
on a pair of pajamas but there was nothing but silence.
That was the first night in a long
time we had made love. But to call it that isn’t really fair. It wasn’t
love-making, not the way it usually is between us. There was no pleasure, just
two bodies pressed together going through the motions. We didn’t say a single
word the whole time. Our bodies knew what to do, but the fire that had brought
us together, that kept us together, was missing. When we pulled apart from
another and my wife curled up on her side of the bed, as far away as she could
possibly be, I felt a part of me wither and die, like a poorly tended plant.
I always thought if the universe was
going to end, it would go out with a bang, a blazing, fiery ball of glory,
never yielding to defeat, not even in the end. I never imagined that it could
ever end in any other way. But after B’Elanna’s warm body left my side and
a cold silence fell upon our cabin, I knew the unthinkable had just occurred.
My world had just ended in ice.
