**subject>>P/T **stardate>>season two>>somewhere between `Investigations' and `the Basics' **follows shortly after `Rain' =/\= Disclaimer =/\= Voyager & crew & etc.: (c) by Paramount/Viacom =/\= the lyrics to `Shelter on a Rainy Day': (c) 2 Unlimited =/\= the story: (c) by me! (That's Niels van Eekelen) =/\= and Janine Lamont belongs to the P/T Collective =/\= beta-read by Maaike van Eekelen, who, to my eternal and everlasting sorrow and regret, I completely forgot to mention with the first `Rain' story. She's also the source of chapter 21's dedication. =/\= Any comments? Please send them to: Maaikeve@Freemail.nl That's my sister's email. She'll pass them on to me. =/\= "RAIN" "Silence between the Storms" =/\= #Ooh-ah ah ah# +Shelter on a rainy day+ #You may need me Like I need you #I see clouds gathering in the sky When my worries fill my mind Watercolors all begin to fade I wanna be with you If it starts to rain 'Cause I can hide in your arms So safe and warm With you as my protection To help me through the storm ooh #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You washed my tears away yeah #Yeah yeah #If inside your heart it starts to rain Just call me up I'll ease the pain You don't ever need to be alone When the wi-ind begins to moan 'Cause whenever you may need me Like I need you Then let me be right by your side In love we'll see it throu-ough #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You give me shelter on a rainy day (On a rainy day-ay) You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey (Ooh you give me shelter) You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away# +A shelter on a rainy day A lovely warm place For you and I to stay Mm what you thinking? Don't tell me no lies Because your eyes are blinkin' There's a place girl Down deep in my heart You know the feeling A relationship destroyed I send my love without delay 'Cause you know I've got A shelter on a rainy day+ #You give me shelter Hey-e-ey Your love has washed them all away Mm-mm #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You give me shelter on a rainy day (On a rainy day-ay) You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey (Ooh you give me shelter) You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away-ay# =/\= "RAIN, Part Eighteen" "Silence between the Storms, part one" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 6 & 8 & 25 - 26 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Majel Barrett, probably the one person who has appeared in more Trek episodes than anyone else, in roles ranging from the computer voice to the Lwaxana Troi. =/\= In the first weeks after the Jeekar VI away mission, Paris and I were a bit awkward around each other. Oh, our relationship certainly had improved, I thought we'd both agree to that -- if we'd ever had the guts to discuss it -- but before, there had always been a certain balance between us, and now that was gone. We still ate together with Harry a lot in the Messhall, and we talked or listened to each other, or listened to Harry talk, but we didn't *really* feel comfortable around each other. At least, I knew that *I* didn't, and though Paris' face was always completely unreadable, I could hazard an educated guess. As time passed, we got used to each other again, but we didn't really settle down. Professionally, communicating was much less of a problem, and we even mentioned off-duty things sometimes, or cracked a joke. Well, Tom did most of *that*. I had to admit, if you gave his jokes half a chance, which I only now started doing, they could be very funny. Still, off-duty we avoided each other like the plague at any time Harry wasn't with us. All of that changed about two weeks after Tuvok's telepathic therapy, when Paris was assigned to assist me in Shuttle Bay One, and we got more than we bargained for. I was doing some re- designing on one of the shuttlecraft, so it would be easier to keep it running with the limited resources at our disposal, and needed a pilot's opinion on how the changes would influence the shuttle's manoeuverability. When Tom arrived, I was just hanging halfway inside a hatch on the shuttle's hull, only my legs hanging out at an awkward angle. I heard him chuckle and crawled out. Paris immediately snapped to attention and gave me an archaic salute. "Lt Paris reporting for duty as ordered, sir, Lt Torres, sir!" he proclaimed. He wasn't able to hide his smirk, though. "As you were, lieutenant," I replied gravely. I thought that that was the correct response for that particular salute, but I wasn't really very familiar with this sort of stuff. Paris suddenly grinned and reached for my cheek. I took an unconscious step back. It took me a moment before I realized what he was doing: wiping a stain from my cheek. I must have spilt some coolant while I was working. I didn't tell Tom to stop, but all the same, I wished he would. His touch made me feel strange. Then he made a smart remark about that I already had a beauty mark on my other cheek, and I used that as an excuse -- to myself as much as to Tom -- to slap his hand aside and finish the scrubbing myself. I hated to call it that, an excuse, but it was, really. Tom was still smiling, but I could see that his moment of real enjoyment had passed. Tom had been a bit depressed for several days now. I didn't think many people had noticed, because he was still acting the clown at every opportunity he got, but I had. I wondered if I had only noticed Tom's dark mood because I had recently learned how and where to look for emotions in Paris, and *that* led me to the question if he had had these moods more often before I could spot them, or if it was merely a one-time-occurrence. "So," Tom said, "what did you need me for?" "Come with me," I replied. I took him into the shuttlecraft and there I showed him what I was doing. Ever since the day the Caretaker brought Voyager to the Delta Quadrant, it seemed that there hadn't been one moment in which we didn't have a shortage of one or both of two important things. One of those things was spare parts for the ship, the shuttles and all other equipment. Of course, we could replicate most of the necessary materials, but replicating took a lot of energy. Unfortunately, energy was the other of the two things Voyager continuously lacked. I, along with my Engineering staff, was supposed to ignore the impossibilities and keep everything running, so I had come up with a way to let shuttles perform properly while actually consisting of fewer parts. When the shuttlecraft Cochrane was recently wrecked -- amazingly, not even by Paris himself -- I was presented with the perfect opportunity to show that, or to see if it actually worked. I probably could have recited the details of what I had done in my sleep. That was very useful, because I couldn't seem to stay concentrated on them. My gaze kept drifting back to Tom. He had an intent frown on his face, and studied the controls I pointed out. Just minutes before he'd been a complete joker, but now he was all business. Far more than normally when he was working, actually. Just goes to show you, that despite the good start we'd made today, we still felt anything but comfortable around each other. I could still feel precisely where Tom had touched my left cheek. Agk! Why did I think of that? "The controls will probably respond slightly different," said Tom, after I had finished explaining, "but that's just a matter of getting used to it. I don't foresee any other problems. But, then," he continued, suddenly grinning, "I didn't understand half of the technical terms you just used, so we'd probably better feed all this stuff to the holodeck flight simulator and see what happens." "Good idea," I responded. "Let's do that at once. I'll download the program, and we can do it from here. It'll be easier with the shuttle at hand." He nodded. Tom puzzled me. Nothing really new there, but still, this was different. He had made another jest again, but somehow it had only made him seem more depressed. There was something sad in his voice, and especially in his eyes. That incredible blue seemed dull instead of its usual shiny. I walked to the nearest console out in the Shuttle Bay. There should be a padd there that I could use. Ah, yes, there it was. I started the downloading. Maybe I could get Tom to talk about it. Not that *I* was usually very eager to talk about *my* problems, and Tom wasn't much different from me in that respect, but talking could really help when you felt down. And aside from that, to be completely honest, I was terribly curious. What could make the person who was in a jolly mood even at the most inappropriate times feel so bad that it showed? "I've got it," I said when the computer beeped to announce that it had finished. I looked up from the console back at the shuttle to find Tom staring at me. Well, he might just have glanced in my direction, but from the way he jerked his look away from me guiltily when I noticed it, I'd have said he'd been staring. In the brief moment when our eyes met I could see that some of the shine had returned in the blue of his eyes. That was good, I supposed, but I mostly felt that if Paris solved his own depression, I'd *never* stand a chance of finding out what it was about. Selfish, perhaps, but true. Over the years, I had learned to lie as little to myself as possible. Tom took a quick look around Shuttle Bay. "Tell me, B'Elanna, is it me, or is this place awfully empty? Did you arrange this so there'd be no witnesses in case you felt the need to hit me?" Aside from the Cochrane and the two of us, there was nothing in the Shuttle Bay but a few crates standing in one corner, not even the one officer that was usually on guard duty. I sighed. Tom had definitely gotten *some* of his usual mood back. "I can arrange the hitting if you'd like that, but that's not why the bay is empty. In case you've forgotten, the containment field went down and we lost the air in here when ensign Bristow attempted to land that shuttle you're leaning against, and the Shuttle Bay is still out of use till we've double-double-checked all the safeties." Why was I telling him all of this? He should have remembered it himself. He probably did. Then Paris took a dramatic pose. In my brain, that immediately registered as a sign of trouble. "Ah," he said, "crashes. That's what you get for letting inferior pilots fly around." "Excuse me?" I blurted out. "Are you trying to say that there's no damage when *you* fly?" Too late I realised that somewhere in there I acknowledged Tom as not being an `inferior pilot'. "B'Elanna, B'Elanna," said Paris soothingly, slowly shaking his head from side to side, "*I* get the *difficult* missions. *They* only get the *milk runs*. *I* --" He never finished what he was saying, because suddenly the entire ship seemed to jump several feet up into the air and then fell back again. I was just walking across the open space between the console and the shuttle, so there was nothing for me to hold on to and I was thrown up off the deck. I didn't know if I would have been better off anywhere else, though, 'cause a moment before the lights went out, I saw that Tom was up in the air as well. When all the lights went out on a starship, especially in rooms lacking a view of the stars -- like this Shuttle Bay was now that the bay doors had been securely closed after the recent crash -- it got literally completely dark. For one thing, I could feel that I was falling back down, but I never caught a glimpse of the deck with my eyes, even after I crashed into it. Then everything was still once more. I didn't think we were still in warp. For a moment, there was an eerie quiet. I shook my head to clear it. "B'Elanna?" Tom's voice called through the darkness. "Talk to me!" "I'm all right," I answered. I felt relieved that he, apparently, was relatively all right too. "Tell me something," Tom called again. "Was that supposed to happen?" =/\= end of part eighteen "RAIN, Part Nineteen" "Silence between the Storms, part two" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 26 - 27 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Martha Hackett, not the *only* person to play two different alien species in Startrek, but the only person to play two different alien species while being the same character. (Not counting single episode disguises.) =/\= "Very funny, Paris," B'Elanna responded. I believed that she was really all right. With her, you could never simply trust her word for it if she *said* she was fine, but from her words and her tone, I thought I could make out that she'd told me the truth. "Computer, lights," B'Elanna said. As we had both expected, nothing happened. Yet, we had had to try. "Computer?" Still nothing. "Damn." I tapped my commbadge. "Paris to bridge... Paris to anybody." I had no more succes than B'Elanna had had. "Just wonderful," I muttered. I heard B'Elanna curse in Klingon as she bumped into something. "Stay where you are, B'Elanna," I called. "I'm near the shuttle, I'll get a flashlight from inside." She called back an affirmative. I got to my feet slowly. Though I wasn't exactly injured, my landing on the deck had been far from comfortable. Now, for the shuttlecraft. I hoped that I was as near to it as I thought. Of course, I hadn't actually *seen* where I'd landed, but the shuttle should have been right in front of me. Carefully, I felt around in the dark. Ah, there it was. The Cochrane, my good old Warp ten comrade. I moved to the entrance in the back and went inside. Then I had a better idea than the flashlight. "Computer," I said, "lights." The shuttlecraft's computer was still working, as I'd hoped. When the lights went on I had to blink a few times before I could see anything clearly. "Wonderful," I said finally, smiling. This time, I meant it. "All right, computer, now give me some external lights." The computer complied, and suddenly the Shuttle Bay was as brightly lit as the inside of the Cochrane. Well, parts of it, anyway. The headlights didn't reach everywhere, so some parts of the bay were still dusky, and others remained near-completely dark. It gave the entire place a kinda haunted look. Fit my mood perfectly. I knew it was selfish -- if not downright stupid -- but I could do with a bit of a crisis. There was nothing like danger to keep your mind from wandering. I leaned out and gestured to B'Ella to come on over. "Let's get inside the shuttle," I said. She'd shielded her eyes from the bright light, so I wasn't sure if she'd seen my gesture. "Big flashlight," she commented when she stepped through the door. I looked her over quickly, just in case. I didn't see any bruises, but then, you could break bones in these uniforms, and it still wouldn't show. "You know me, B'Elanna," I countered, "I always strive to give you the very best." That was another good thing about this particular crisis. B'Elanna was one of the few people who didn't find the combination of impending disaster and my humor completely maddening -- some of the time, at least. Already it seemed as if the existing tension between us was being converted into a more professional tension that was directed outward, uniting us, instead of keeping us apart. I could definitely live with that. While all this had been crossing my mind, B'Elanna had apparently also taken a look at me. "Isn't that blue supposed to stay in your eyes, Paris?" she asked tartly. She was looking at my forehead. I gathered that the spot where I'd hit it must have gotten a brand new skin tone. She tried to hide it, but B'Elanna sounded worried. I noticed that her hand twitched as if it wanted to reach up and touch my bruise. "Ah, I'm afraid that I'm dying," I spoke dramatically and took my wounded head in both of my hands. "Actually," I added, taking my hands away again, "I'm just honing my head-hitting skills for the next *really* good opportunity I get." B'Elanna snorted loudly, and assumed -- correctly -- that I was fine. "If we use the Cochrane's sensors," I suggested, "maybe we can find out what's going on." B'Elanna shook her head. "The sensors are still off-line from the crash. Virtually everything is." I cursed. We stood silently for a while, wondering what else we could try. Well... At least that was what we were supposed to be thinking about. I was fairly certain that B'Ella *was* doing so, but as it did often, my mind wandered -- as well to the good, which was standing next to me, as to the bad, which I'd left behind in the Alpha quadrant. Idly I wondered what the latter would think of the former. I didn't think he would have liked her at all. Not that I cared. Suddenly B'Elanna spoke again. "Maybe... Maybe I could re-route the interior sensors so that they can scan outside..," she said, as if voicing her thoughts out loud. I frowned. I hadn't believed that what B'Elanna had just suggested was possible. Still, I wasn't really surprised; B'Elanna could usually make machines do the strangest things if she put her mind to it. I stepped aside so that she could get to the consoles in the front of the shuttlecraft. B'Elanna sat down behind one of them and set to work. It was at times like these that I wished I had paid a little more attention during `Starship Mechanics 101' at the Academy. As it was, there was little to nothing that I could do to help this half-Klingon woman with her work. And although I often pretended to be it, I detested being useless. Also, since the danger was hardly immediate, I got distracted again. My attention-span could really be pathetic at times. Briefly, I at least kept to the matters at hand and wondered if the rest of the crew was all right. The worst scenario I could think of involved the deaths of everyone on the bridge and its direct environment, but that seemed very unlikely. The shudder we'd felt wasn't consistent with an explosion. More likely, it had been a result of the sudden power-drain, instead of the other way 'round. There had been a power-drain, Voyager fell out of Warp, and that had shaken us up. That sounded about right, but I had no idea what could have caused the power-drain. I'd leave that for B'Elanna to discover. Because I really didn't feel like pondering lousy memories, which was one of my options, I watched B'Elanna working; her face frowning intently, her hands flashing over the console. I tried to avoid staring at B'Elanna most of the time, so that she couldn't catch me at it. And, I have to admit, because I was just a tiny bit afraid that I wouldn't be able to look away again. Ever since I'd admitted to myself that I was in love with B'Ella, I had discovered that every time I saw her, I loved her a little more. Why *did* I hide what I felt for her? I had told plenty of girls that I loved them, including more than a few who I hadn't, not really. Why should it be different with B'Elanna? Because she *was* different, I realised. B'Elanna was not someone with whom I wanted to go on a few dates, have some fun with in mine or her quarters, and then move on. There was a lot more to B'Elanna than the most beautiful body which I had ever seen. To my own continuous surprise, it was what lay inside her that I loved most. "Kahless!" B'Elanna cursed. I blinked, startled. It seemed more time had passed than I'd thought already, if she was finished. B'Elanna continued. "We could fly off if we'd like, but that's damn well the only thing this junkpile could handle!" "Well now," I said, "there's an idea: the two of us could fly away together. Sounds terribly romantic." That visibly shocked B'Elanna. It was an effort not to flinch myself. I had *not* intended to say that. It just flipped out. Quickly I tried to cover myself before B'Elanna's infamous Klingon temper could get the better of her. "If the shuttle's sensors won't help us," I said, "we could try a scan with normal hand-held tricorders." That might actually have been of use. I always got my best ideas when I was in tight spots. B'Elanna considered it for a moment. In the glance she threw up at me I read that the tricorders weren't the only things that she considered. I wondered what she was thinking. There were several emotions in B'Elanna's face that I could read -- frustration, surprise, a little annoyance -- but not the outright anger for which I'd been afraid. Why this simple absence started a bonfire of hope in my heart, I didn't know. I quenched that hope as well as I could; I knew from experience that it would probably make me over-confident and I was still certain that that would result in me relocating the past two weeks of thinking of and watching B'Elanna to the `bad' category of my memories. No way in hell that I was going to risk that. I would tell B'Elanna how I felt about her eventually, I promised myself. But first I wanted know her a little better. Oh, I was sure that I knew B'Elanna already, as much as one person knew another, with whom he shared a friend, and perhaps even a friendship, but I wanted to know *everything* about her. If only to find a way to tell her what needed telling so much which didn't take me to Sickbay. I really *was* going to tell her. "Good idea," B'Elanna decided finally. "At the very least we can find out if this is the only place without power and if there are any living people nearby. Let's do it." "Right," I said, a bit wryly. Being afraid to tell B'Elanna that I loved her was all very well, but I couldn't do a thing that would prevent me from hoping desperately that B'Ella would not turn me down. =/\= end of part nineteen "RAIN, Part Twenty" "Silence between the Storms, part three" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 27 - 30 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to whoever can tell me if the correct spelling is `Star Trek', `StarTrek', or `Startrek'. And here's another question, what's the Klingon spelling? How about `StAr'TrEK'? =/\= As I had expected, the tricorders weren't able to tell us much, but it was a great relief to know that at least others on Voyager were alive. Together, Tom and I had detected 53 lifesigns, which was about right, considering the limited scanning range the small tricorders possessed. Tom and I had both taken a tricorder and a flashlight from the Cochrane and walked them along the Shuttle Bay's walls. Now, we'd gone back into the shuttlecraft and were comparing our data. No part of the ship which the tricorders had been able to reach had had power, so we assumed that the drain had been ship-wide. For the zillionth time I wished that I was back in Engineering. Unfortunately, all of the doors out of the Shuttle Bay had shut tight automatically when we lost power. It was a sensible precaution, in case the bay doors had been open and there hadn't been power to contain the air pressure, but it left me and Tom with no place to go. "So all we can do is just sit around and wait for someone to rescue us?" Tom asked agitatedly. "Yes," I answered. "Unless you want to take a phaser and blast your way out of here." I had the feeling that there was something I should have remembered that we could have done, but when I tried to recall it, it slipped out of reach. Tom winced deliberately. "No, I'd rather not. It might upset the captain a bit, and then she'd let me clean the mess up myself." I couldn't hold back a short laugh, though I certainly tried. After a few moments of awkward silence, Tom spoke up again. "I hope you understand, B'Elanna," he said, "that since we're trapped in here together, I expect you to help me with a most fascinating conversation." Something told me that had I been any other woman -- except maybe captain Janeway -- he would have suggested doing something completely different. Paris, of course, was less than half serious, but it took me only a second to decide to use the opening he'd given me. "All right, Paris," I told him, "then why don't you tell me about why you've been so down lately." Tom's smile -- which had been a fake in the first place -- lost all sense of credulity and finally shattered. Then he looked at me, and the traces of the surprise he'd felt moments earlier were already nearly completely hidden from his face. "You're awfully direct today, aren't you?" Tom responded in an almost amused tone. I grimaced. "I was trying to prevent you from trying to change the subject, like you're doing now, Paris." Tom dropped his eyes to the deck. I didn't think he was watching anything visible, though. "It's personal," he commented lamely. "All the more reason to talk about it," I said, "since that undoubtedly means you've bottled it all up inside yourself." When it seemed that Tom wasn't going to respond, I continued. "C'mon, Tom," I said, "you hide it well enough, but something has been bothering you for days now, and it isn't simply going to go away if you deny it." I had plenty of experience with that myself. "Talking about it can help a lot. I know that." Tom still didn't look at me. "And why are you suddenly so eager to lend me your ears? We're not exactly all that close, are we?" It was the first time either of us had ever said anything like that, and to my surprise, I didn't like the sound of it at all. "I just thought you'd want to talk to someone," I said quickly with a shrug. "And I'm not sure if anyone else even knows about your bad mood... Besides," I continued, "I felt that I owe it to you to listen. You listened to my talking when I needed to talk, and now I wanted to return the favor." Tom was surprised to hear this, and with good reason. The Vidian prison was not exactly one of my favorite subjects. "That's not completely true, you know," Tom said. He still wasn't looking at me. "I mean, I talked to you then too. We spent half a night exchanging lousy pasts." "Two things," I responded. "One. You talked because I needed you to. Two. I... Well, I was too busy with myself to pay much attention to you and I... I don't remember all that much of what you said." When had this conversation shifted from talking about Tom to talking about me? When I was talking with Tom I often seemed to reveal things that I didn't really want to reveal to anyone. I ought to have stayed away from him. Tom sighed deeply. I didn't think that he was faking this one. Still, there was a small smile on his lips when he spoke. "You're not going to let this lie, are you?" I shook my head and he finally looked at me. "Pity," he said. Then why did he look so amused, and even glad? "It's foolish, really. I shouldn't have let myself get so worked up about it." He waited a moment, but when I didn't say anything, he sighed again and continued. "I made the mistake," he said, "to think of home." I blinked in surprise. I had had no idea of what to expect, but this... this hadn't even been one of the options. Tom? Homesick? I realized that he was watching me intently, searching for my reaction. "I'm sorry if seem a bit surprised, Paris," I said quickly, "but I didn't think you'd left anything behind in the Alpha quadrant to be homesick about." "Homesick?" Tom asked, with a sudden smile on his face. Then he had a short fit of laughter. His laughter sounded both bitter and honestly amused. It irritated me. I was trying to help him here, wasn't I? Tom held his hands in front of him defensively when he noticed my scowl. "No, B'Elanna," he said, and the sounds of his laughing ceased abruptly. "No, I'm not homesick. Getting lost in the Delta quadrant all those months ago was the best thing that had happened to me in years." Again he appeared to look at something only visible to him. "Then why --" I began. "It's much like it is with you, actually. Bad childhood. Bad parents. Or a bad father, anyway. I can't even really remember my mother. She died when I was still very small. But, you know, B'Elanna? You envy a lot of people for having a father, and I actually envy *you* for not having one." I was surprised, if not shocked, that Tom knew this thing about me; I wasn't very proud of it, and did my very best not to let it show. How did Tom know about it? I was also a bit shocked by the idea that he wished that he *didn't* have his father. To me, such a thing was absolutely unthinkable, but I supposed that it must have been different for someone who had never *not* had a father. I had already known that this admiral Paris was a far cry from the ideal father, but what could he have done to make Tom want this? It took me a moment to realise that Tom had stopped talking and was pondering silently again. "Go on," I urged. He looked at me blankly. "Exactly what is it that has had you worked up for days on end, Paris?" "It's really nothing," Tom said. "I shouldn't let something like this bother me. I'm just making a fool out of myself -- and this time it's not even on purpose!" I ignored his attempt to distract me with a jest. Quite possibly what was bothering Tom would seem insignificant if he talked about it. Little things could sometimes irritate far longer than big things. Like mosquito bites compared to a Klingon pain-stick. The stick hurts the worst by far, but it passes, and the bites keep itching like forever. Still, this all didn't really matter. The fact was that I was trying to help Tom, and with what I was supposed to help was with whatever he couldn't handle by himself. =/\= end of part twenty =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-one" "Silence between the Storms, part four" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 6 - 7 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Josh Clark, whose character Joe Carey I believe is still locked in his quarters, where he was sent to in his last appearance, in `State of Flux'. (Hey! That was my idea! Maaike) =/\= I couldn't believe that I was talking about this. Or to whom I was talking about it. It had always seemed so right, so... logical... to keep those countless annoying bits of memory stored somewhere safely out of reach for others, but now B'Elanna wanted to hear about them. And she was genuinely interested. With her, I didn't have to wonder if she just wanted to have a look at what made the famous, the equally adored and hated Tom Paris tick. And, I realized, *I* wanted her to know. As much as I wanted to know B'Elanna, I wanted *her* to know *me*. Sometimes I tried to let the smokescreen behind which I hid myself from the world come down when I was with B'Elanna, but I could never tell if I really succeeded myself. My mask only wanted to come off of its own accord, when I actually felt comfortable with someone. "Tom Paris," B'Elanna said, "don't stop talking now." I looked at her. She looked corcerned, and just a little bit annoyed. Apparently I had been lost in thought again. "I was talking about my father, right?" B'Elanna nodded. I sighed. "When I was very little, perhaps up until I was seven, maybe eight years old, I always used to hate it when my father went away on an assignment. He wasn't particularly less strict than my nanny -- the poor woman who took care of me when my dad was away hated to be called `nanny', so I always did -- but my father was my father, after all. "But unfortunately my dad believed that the younger I started learning Starfleet things and following Starfleet discipline, the faster and further I would eventually make it. And I was going to make it all the way to the top. Through the Academy with flying colours, maybe take a short pause to breathe when I'd made it to captaincy, but then straight on to admiralcy." I held up a hand at B'Elanna's slightly sceptical expression. "It's ridiculous, I know," I said, "but that's honest to god how my father planned my life." I was silent again for a few moments, but went on before B'Elanna could encourage me to do so again. It was strange to have someone listening who wanted to hear, and I was rather not reminded of that fact too often, because then I might change my mind and keep the whole story to myself. "From the day dad decided that I was old enough to understand the rules, he made me follow them. I started to resent the time that dad was at home." I smiled sadly. "I started to do the most horrible things when he *wasn't* at home, though, like transporting to some city halfway across the planet and staying there all day, which would *really* make my nanny worry herself sick. I was smart enough to get away with it with relatively low punishments. But when my dad would come home I'd be in deep shit. We soon got to a point where dad would yell at me for the things I'd done while he was away for almost the entire first day he was home. It was all worth it, though, without that I'd have gone crazy. "When my father was at home, I didn't get to have any fun at all anymore. Oh, sure, I could go play when I had learned my lessons well enough, only I never had, according to dad. When he was on Earth, I always studied like crazy, to make my dad proud for once. I just *knew* that if I tried that little bit harder, I could do it better, I could do it right. Always when I did make that one accomplishment, dad had long since moved on to the next level. It seemed that he was always angry, always yelling at me. And I kept trying to please the bastard, like some moron who'd donated his brain to the Foundation For Aiding Cardassian Evolution." There I stopped, startled for having said that much. I had never talked about this before, to no one. Carefully I studied B'Elanna for reactions. Because I had never told anyone about this before, I had no idea of what to expect. I was afraid of what I'd find. I had wanted B'Elanna to know that there was more to me than a two-dimensional joker and womanizer, but I hadn't wanted to disgust her with a pathetic story about a skwirming little boy. But on B'Elanna's face, I saw no reaction at all. Her eyes were unfocused, her mind lost in some memory of her own. Then her eyes re-focused, and I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. When B'Ella looked at me, her features were filled with understanding. "It's weird," she said, "our memories of our parents are so completely each others' opposites, and yet they're so much the same. My father wasn't there when I needed him; neither was yours. But my father left and never came back, and your father refused to let you go to have your own life instead of his. It was my mother who kept nagging me about the Klingon ways, and your mother was the one who wasn't there. I know that she died, that it wasn't her fault that she wasn't there, but the similarity -- or the opposite -- remains." Neither of us had anything to say to that, and we sat in silence for a while. A comfortable silence, for a change. B'Elanna was right about the similarities and opposites. What cruel twist of fate or luck had brought two persons with such completely different/equal backgrounds on one starship? But that was yet another of those things dad used to tell me time and time again: there was no such thing as luck; a man either made his own or failed himself. "Tom?" B'Elanna asked. I gave her a questioning look. "Go on. You haven't told me yet why all of this is bothering you now. After all, your father is 70,000 lightyears away." I shook my head slightly in amazement. Not only had I *not* disgusted B'Elanna into going away, but in fact she wanted to hear more! I had realized long ago that I would never understand B'Elanna, but until this moment I had never realized how good a thing that could be. Well, the talking was working for the both of us -- I *was* feeling better already, and B'Elanna was hearing things about me that I doubted she had ever even suspected -- so I might as well go on with the show. "Why it's bothering me now, why it's bothering me now." I thought for a moment. "There's not really a good reason. I just thought of my father once, and now he won't let go of my thoughts anymore -- like you said, that he refuses to let go. It's really no big deal, it happens sometimes. After a few days my mind always drifts away from dad. In the meantime, I try to find other things to distract me." "Had any luck with that now?" B'Elanna asked. Yes! I wanted to tell her. But, no, I wasn't about to. Thinking about B'Elanna was one of the most distracting things I had ever found as antidote to these moods, so much so that at times I had trouble concentrating on what I was doing, but it was troubling too, in its own way. B'Elanna and I hadn't been this comfortable about talking with each other since that night just after Jeekar VI, or perhaps ever. I realized that I was afraid of changing that status quo. I sighed inwardly. Another excuse to wait a while longer before I told B'Elanna how I felt. "Nothing in particular," I replied, "but I make do. Something usually pops up. I have to say, though, this crisis we're having" -- I made a broad gesture encompassing the entire ship -- "isn't as exciting and distracting as it could have been." There, I'd steered our conversation to a safer topic. "I still have the feeling that there is something I should remember that we could do," B'Elanna said. "It's frustrating." "Well," I responded, "it's no use getting frustrated. Look on the bright side. Literally." "Literally?" B'Elanna asked, frowning, as she was supposed to. She probably realized that she'd been supposed to ask that, but I hadn't underestimated her curiosity. "Yes," I said. "At least *we* have a bright side. The rest of the ship is probably sitting in the dark, and some in starlight." "Kahless!" B'Elanna cursed. "I hadn't thought of that. Must be pretty awful out there." "Oh, I don't know. Do you know what I read that people did when the power went down in New York City once in the twentieth century?" She shook her head disinterestedly. "Well, let's see if you can guess it if I tell you that there was a birth-wave nine months later." I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the color of B'Elanna's face turn redder. Then, after a minute, while I was still laughing, a concentrated frown covered B'Elanna's face. "I know what we have to do," B'Elanna said. I choked on my laughter and then immediately had an extended fit of coughing. I knew that B'Elanna wasn't talking about what *I* had been talking about, but she'd picked an awful moment to think of a solution to our problems. =/\= end of part twenty-one =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-two" "Silence between the Storms, part five" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 7 - 11 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to John DeLancie, for dropping by on Voyager a few times, so that I have someone else who I can dedicate a chapter to. Not to mention that he plays Q brilliantly. =/\= I was so excited about my idea that I completely ignored Paris. He was having a serious fit of coughing all of a sudden, but I was certain that he would be all right in a few moments, and I had to work this out. I went over to the console and started pushing buttons. Gods, this could actually work. Finally Tom stopped coughing. "What did you think of?" he asked, a bit hoarse and out of breath. "It's so simple," I said. "We can't talk to any of the others because Voyager's communication systems are down, right?" Paris agreed sarcastically. "But the Cochrane's computer is still on-line, if barely. If I can reroute our commlink for intra-ship communication through the Cochrane --" "I get it," Paris interrupted, "but I thought nothing on this shuttle worked?" I explained that I could use parts from one of our commbadges to make it work, and Tom handed me his. The shuttle still wouldn't be able to send its own messages, but it should be able to relay one from the other commbadge. It took me maybe twenty minutes to get it all together. Once I looked up to get a circuit I had lying ready, and I noticed Paris again. I'd almost forgotten about him -- like everything else, while I was working. He was sitting with his head leaning on his fists, a rueful smile on his face. He looked like he was feeling decidedly useless, and to be honest, he was. Tom just knew far too little of engineering for me to give him something to do. Well, at least he didn't look like he was thinking about his father at the moment. Perhaps the talking *had* helped. What Tom had said puzzled me. I remembered little from what he had told me in the Vidian prison, but of the things I did remember, I had thought that after telling me about the traumatic haircut Tom had at the very least started to exaggerate most of the things, just so that I would feel more comfortable telling about my past. I didn't like it that he had done no such thing at all. It seriously upset the image I had in my mind of Tom Paris, even after all the revising I had already done on that image lately. I would have to think on where this story fit in, but right now, I had to concentrate on fixing this commlink. "There, that ought to do it," I said contentedly. I wiped some sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. "Well?" Tom said, and looked at me askance. "You're the one with the working commbadge. Aren't you going try it?" I grumbled at Paris' impatience, but I did slap my commbadge. "Torres to bridge," I spoke. "B'Elanna?" the captain's disembodied voice answered, sounding baffled. "Aren't the comm- systems down?" I smiled and Tom grinned at captain Janeway's astonishment. "They are, captain," I replied. "Lt Paris and I are still in Shuttle Bay One, and I rigged this commlink to go through the shuttlecraft's computer." The captain, who sometimes seemed to try to take over Neelix's role as morale officer, complimented me on my thinking and my work. "Can you tell us what's happening, captain?" I asked, a little flustered by her praise. "Harry says we flew through some sort of preationic field, and that it leeched all Voyager's energy, including that of all independent devices in the part of the ship that actually touched the field," the captain explained. "We're now trying to get the back-up generators on-line, but we're not having much luck yet." "Is there anything we can do from here?" Tom asked. There was a moment's silence. "Perhaps there is," the captain said finally, obviously deep in thought, but rapidly becoming enthusiastic. "We aren't getting any response from the generators from here, but the Shuttle Bay is fairly close to them. Go there and try to start them manually." "We can't, captain," I said grimly. "All the ways out of here locked when we lost power to the containment field." From the corner of my eye I could see Tom's amused smile at the sound of captain Janeway cursing. It was indeed a rare occurence, but *I* wasn't amused, and I didn't know why Paris was, either. Until he explained. "There might be a way," Tom said. The captain and I fell silent. "If we connect the powercells from our tricorders to one of the automatic locks, it should give the thing enough power to unlock. Maybe not the doors, but certainly the jefferies tubes." "Lt Torres?" captain Janeway asked over the commlink. "Could this work?" I was almost glad that I could do something about Paris' smug look. Almost. "The lock to the jefferies tubes would certainly have enough power, captain," I told the both of them, "but that won't help us one bit, since the lock won't open anyway until power to the containment field is restored." "Ah," said Paris, even more smugly than he'd been before, "but isn't there someone on this ship who can override the lock?" "Of course!" I exclaimed enthusiastically. "Captain, if we connect those powercells, you can override the lock over the commlink!" Maybe Tom wasn't such a fool after all. Janeway instructed us to do it immediately, while she stood by. As it worked out, `we' didn't do much, but in fact *I* did practically all of the work. Tom only took the cells out of the tricorders and left the rest to me. It was probably just as well, though. We couldn't afford to make any mistakes, and this might have been Tom's idea, but it was definitely my field of expertise, and not Tom's. I melded the two powercells together carefully and then connected the front one to the panel of the hatch to the jefferies tubes. Then I tapped my commbadge again. "Torres to Janeway," I said. "We're ready on this end." "Acknowledged," was the reply. "Here goes. Computer, de-activate emergency seal on jefferies tube entrance DG-318, authorisation Janeway Beta 9562." When the computer voice didn't respond, I thought for a moment that it hadn't worked after all, but then I saw a faint light flickering on the panel. It read: `Emergency lock de-activated.' Only then did I realize that the lock simply didn't have an audio function. "It's open, captain!" I exclaimed. "Good," replied captain Janeway. "Nice work, Maquis!" sounded another voice. That was Harry, obviously. "Hey, Harry!" Tom called, sounding almost but not quite believably hurt. "Don't forget me! It was *my* rather brilliant idea, remember?" "Sorry, Paris," Harry countered, "I didn't mean to bruise your ego -- not that it couldn't use some bruising." "Gentlemen!" Janeway interrupted before Tom could respond. She sounded stern, but not wholly unamused. "Ensign Kim, you are supposed to be working on our current circumstances, and you, Lt Paris, should be on your way to the generators with Lt Torres." "Yes, ma'am," Tom confirmed. "Oh, that reminds me, does this qualify as crunch time?" "Get going Mr Paris! Janeway out." Tom shrugged and gestured for me to go into the jefferies tube, saying that as an officer and a gentleman, he should let ladies go first. Since when was *I* a `lady'? As I crawled into the tube on my hands and knees, I started to do some thinking. My idea about the commlink had come at a very convenient moment, I realized, to prevent me from having to think about what Tom had told me. The things he had confessed about his childhood seemed to fit in with what I already knew about the Tom Paris behind the masks, but for some reason I didn't recognize, I was reluctant to add these new pieces to the puzzle. It was easier to see Tom as a foolish wise-guy than as a man who actually felt emotions. I had decided that I'd solve the mystery that Tom was, and I was still determined that I would, but now I was not so sure of how I would respond to the answers. =/\= end of part twenty-two =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-three" "Silence between the Storms, part six" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 11 - 14 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Mr Ayala, of whom, I'm afraid, I do not know by what actor he is played. Congratulations for being a background crewmember and *still* surviving for so long. Guess keeping your mouth shut can be very useful. =/\= "Are you still following me, Paris?" B'Elanna called back over her shoulder. I rather quickly decided *not* to tell B'Elanna the first answer that popped into my head, namely that I'd follow the sight I had of her butt in the cramped jefferies tubes anywhere, but I also decided that it was expected of me that I'd make *some* flippant remark, so I replied: "You're not going to get rid of me that easily, Torres!" "But I can hope," she countered. The two of us were nearing the ladder that would bring us to the generators two decks higher, right above Shuttle Bay One. I supposed we could simply have walked the horizontal part through the corridor, once we cleared the bay, but it was only a few minute's crawl, and getting out and then back into the jefferies tubes would just be more troublesome. I had to stop for a moment when the half-Klingon in front of me did the same, and then, unfortunately, my beautiful view disappeared as B'Elanna started to climb. That I'd realized some time ago that B'Elanna's body was not the part of her that I loved most did not mean that I couldn't appriciate that, too. With B'Elanna out of sight, I suddenly became very aware of my discomfort at being in the jefferies tubes. I wasn't so hot on small enclosed spaces in the first place, but the fact was that I was just far too damn tall to be crawling through the tubes. I sighed and hurried to follow B'Ella. After the first two dozen or so steps I paused to wipe some sweat from my brow. It was then that I realized that the temperature in the jefferies tube had been rising steadily as B'Elanna and I got higher. At first I'd thought that it had just been my nerves that made me perspire so much, but apparently that wasn't true. "Hey! B'Elanna!" I called upward. "It's not supposed to be so hot here." She stopped climbing as well and looked down at me, breathing a bit hard. "I noticed it too," she replied. I couldn't see her face very well in the dark, but she sounded worried, and a little irritated. B'Ella hated unsolved phenomena. I couldn't fault her for that here. "We'll just have to go and see what it is," she said finally. I nodded, though B'Elanna couldn't see it, and followed her further up. When I reached the right level and climbed into the horizontal tube, B'Elanna was sitting resting for the moment a meter away. I sat down beside her. By now we were both breathing hard. We wanted to hurry in case anyone had been injured when Voyager lost power, but we both knew better than to take stupid chances by exhausting ourselves. The climb had been pretty arduous, with only the flashlights to see where we could put our hands and feet. However, I didn't like the idea of sitting still for long, either. The ladder hadn't been too bad on my nerves, but here in the horizontal tube the ceiling was again too low for me to be able to sit up straight, and aside from that, the temperature was getting to high to be comfortable in. I would have watched B'Elanna for some distraction, but I was certain she'd notice that here. "Let's get going again," I said. B'Elanna nodded and we started moving. I needed something to focus my mind on, so I spoke. "Any ideas on why it's so damn hot in here, B'Elanna? Can it be because life support is down?" "No," she replied pensively, "that wouldn't start bothering us so soon. I think that either there's something wrong with some of the conduits running through the walls, or --" She broke off suddenly and stopped crawling for a moment, then went on at double speed. "B'Elanna?" I asked, confused. "There's light around the next corner. It's kind of flashing." After a moment, I could see the light as well. It was bluish, much like the warp core, and it didn't look good. The dancing of the shadows on the side of the jefferies tube reminded me far too much for comfort of a campfire I'd once had. At the turn, B'Elanna stopped again, and I moved to her side so I could see what was going on, too. While I did that, our sides brushed against each other for an instant, and I felt a jolt going through my entire body. I looked at B'Ella and wondered if she'd felt the same, but when I looked down the jefferies tube, I understood that even if she had, B'Elanna wouldn't have paid enough attention to it to react to it anyway. The tube was filled with blue flames. For a minute, I was stunned. What could have caused this? All sorts of safeties were in place that should have prevented the powerdrain from doing anything remotely like this. Could an accident here have caused the powerdrain, then? But the captain had said that according to Harry it had been a preationic field in space -- actually, I thought preationic particles were supposed to be so rare that all of the particles in the Alpha quadrant couldn't have created a field large enough to cause the drain, but that was the Delta quadrant for you -- and I knew that Harry would never make so big a mistake. And there was more. If the drain couldn't have caused the fire, did that mean that there'd been someone here to cause it? And was that someone still there? B'Elanna got herself back together first. She opened a panel on the right-hand wall and yelled at me at the same time. "Paris! We have to close this part of the tubes manually! Help me with the hatch!" That snapped me out of my daze, too. B'Elanna tore off the panel and started pumping the handle beneath it until a part of the wall opened and revealed the emergency hatch. Together we pulled on the hatch until it connected with the opposite side. It went painstalkingly slow, but finally we managed to do it. Once the hatch was closed, the temperature dropped suddenly, and so did the light. Once again we had only our flashlights to help us see. B'Elanna and I wiped the fresh sweat from our brows, but we didn't stop to pause. I thought for a moment. "Through JT35 into JT12?" I asked. B'Elanna nodded. "That's the shortest route," she confirmed. Then we started crawling back into the jefferies tube, this time with me in front. At the first crossing I turned away from where we had come, into the tube that I had mentioned. Quickly, we moved around the fire, to get to the other side. At least, we'd get there if the burning plasma hadn't spread too far yet. I asked B'Elanna if this might have something to do with the trouble the bridge had been having with reaching the back-up generators. "Probably," she answered. "The commands should have gone through there, and maybe the computer can't reroute them without power." For the rest of the short trip, we were silent, trying to save our breaths. When we returned to the fire, from the other side this time, B'Elanna immediately ripped off the control panel, which was farther away from the fire than the one on the other side had been. I, on the other hand, merely looked in the direction of the near-blinding light. I could have sworn that I saw something lying in the tube. There it was again. An indeterminable shape on the floor was silhouetted against the plasma flames. When I heard the slight hiss of the hatch coming out of its concealment, I laid a hand on B'Elanna's shoulder to indicate her to stop. She looked at me askance, but I stayed intent on the body. "There's someone in there," I said. B'Elanna jerked her face to where I was looking. After a moment, she swallowed hard and nodded. "You're right," she said in a near-whisper. Then we looked at each other. "Do you think he's still alive?" B'Elanna asked. I shrugged. "There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" I replied, and slowly started to crawl forward. Behind me, I heard B'Elanna follow. The person in front of us was lying sprawled on his back -- *her* back, I noticed as we got closer. She wasn't quite lying in the fire, but she was close. A short distance away from her the heat became nearly unbearable, but I pushed on. After the time I'd just spent in the darkness, it was hard to keep track of where I was going in the firelight. Janine Lamont. It was Janine Lamont who was lying in the jefferies tube. Horrible plasma burns covered her entire body, and I could barely recognize her face, but it was her. Hastily, I checked the ensign's pulse on her charred wrist. It was faint, but at least it *was* there. She was still alive. Without any way of reaching Sickbay, and no Holodoc even if we had, I wondered how long that would last. =/\= end of part twenty-three =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-four" "Silence between the Storms, part seven" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 16 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Samantha `Spacemom' Wildman (Nancy Hower) and her daughter Naomi, Voyager's firstborn child. =/\= In this kind of situations, I was often a little surprised at the things we did, Tom as well as me myself. I didn't exactly see myself as the hero-type, but neither Tom nor I hesitated for a moment before going towards the fire when we saw the body. We pulled ourselves forward as fast as we could, Tom a little ahead of me. If our luck ran out -- what little we had of it -- a sudden burst of flame could leap out of the fire and incinerate us. But the plasma fire had been relatively calm so far, so I didn't judge that very likely. Tom was at the body now, checking for signs of life among the dreadful burns. All of a sudden, recognition set in. "Kahless!" I cursed. "It's Janine Lamont!" Janine was an ensign with Operations, but in reality she usually worked for me on various Engineering jobs. Quickly, my mind started building a scenario of what might have happened. A slight disturbance might have registered down in Engineering -- nothing major, or I would have been notified -- and Lamont had been sent to investigate. Then Voyager had hit the preationic field and hell had broken loose. Quite literally. "I know," Tom said in a tense voice. Sweat was dripping off his face to the floor. "She's still alive. Let's get her away from here." Somehow Tom and I managed to drag the ensign away, to beyond the emergency hatch, but I would never be really sure *how* we did it. It was an awkward going, because the jefferies tubes were too small for the three of us to move side by side, and Tom and I had to be careful not to aggravate Lamont's injuries. At the hatch, I let Tom drag Lamont further alone, while I started to try to pull the hatch across the opening. When I finished doing so two minutes later, I turned back to Paris, who was examining Lamont a little ways into the tube. It was incredible how much the temperature had dropped once that hatch was closed. Perhaps it was just the contrast with the heat of the plasma fire in which I'd just been in, but I was even a bit cold in my sweat- soaked uniform. "B'Elanna," Tom spoke without looking up, "I need you to get an emergency medkit. You ought to be able to find one nearby on this deck." "Will she make it?" I asked. "I don't know," Tom replied. "Just go!" The lack of any wisecracks and the grim tone of Tom's voice told me that Janine must have been doing very bad indeed, but he would do anything he could to save her. I hurried over to the nearest exit point, kicked it open and rushed into the corridor outside without looking back. In the corridor, my wristlight had a much broader reach, and I swung it around to see where exactly I was. Unfortunately, there was no one else out in the corridor, as I'd hoped. Looked like Paris and I would have to finish this on our own. I already knew I was on Deck Six, and soon I had pinpointed where. There should be a medkit at a back-up Operations station which wasn't far. I started running as fast as I dared in the dark. Still I didn't run into anyone, in either meaning of the words. Naturally, power was down at the Ops station, too, but I saw lights blinking on a tricorder, and I took it. Tricorders were always useful. I grabbed the emergency medkit from underneath the console and set off back at a run again. When I returned to Tom and Lamont, Tom was muttering half-incomprehensibly to the inert form on the deck, saying that she couldn't die, that he wouldn't let her -- all the while pounding on her heart. I didn't think that Janine was breathing. "Tom!" I said. "I'm back. What do I do?" He didn't stop pounding on Lamont's heart and didn't look up at me. "Give me a hypospray with cordrazine," Tom told me. I searched the medkit quickly and handed it to him. Tom tapped a few buttons for the right amount and then pressed it to Lamont's neck. At the familiar hiss of the hypospray releasing its contents into the patient's veins, Lamont's body jerked violently, but then she lay perfectly still again. Tom picked up the medical tricorder from the deck where I had put it when I searched the medkit and ran the sensor over Lamont. "Damn!" he cursed. He took the hypospray again. "Let's see what she does with a double dose," Tom commented to no one in particular. Again he pressed the hypospray to Lamont's neck and again her entire body jerked. This time, however, her eyes opened wide and she started to moan softly, as if she wanted to scream but couldn't. "Tranquillizer, quickly!" Tom called. I handed him the other hypospray from the medkit, and when he sedated the ensign, she fel into unconsciousness again. But this time, she was still breathing. Tom ran the tricorder's sensor over her again before he leaned back against the wall, btreathing hard. He looked like he was emotionally exhausted. "She's stable, for the moment," he said softly. To be honest, I felt emotionally exhausted, too, but somehow it seemed to me that Paris had taken the situation with ensign Lamont very personally, and I found myself wondering why. Perhaps she was one of Paris' conquests. I wouldn't have known. I never listened to the scuttlebutt, especially if it had *that* kind of topic. For some reason, that possibility made me angry, but I directed the anger at myself. This wasn't the time to develop a sudden interest in gossip! We still had a job to do, and we were wasting time! "Paris, is there anything else you can do for her here and now?" I questioned Tom. Tom looked at me, slightly confused, probably about the ill-concealed anger in my voice. "A few things," he replied, "to keep her stabilized until we can get her to Sickbay. The burns are more superficial than I thought at first; it was the moving around that got her heart in trouble." "Then do what you can," I said. "We have to get moving again." Tom took some things from the medical equipment sprawled across the deck and set to work. Meanwhile, I thought about what we had to do next. A rupture in a plasma conduit, like what must have happened where ensign Lamont had been working, could have easily sent a backlash through the system and have caused another fire elsewhere. There were safeties to prevent that, of course, but as I got to hear so often, this ship simply wasn't in as good a shape as a Starfleet vessel was supposed to be. I hoped that we would be able to make it to the back-up generators without any further delays, and especially without any more nearly dead people. I hardly noticed it when Tom came up to me, I was so lost in thought. I was startled back into the present when Tom laid a hand on my shoulder. So startled, apparently, that Tom felt the need to snatch his hand back hastily. "This is all I can do. Janine ought to be all right until we can beam her out of here... Well," he shrugged ruefully, "she ought to stay alive, maybe not `all right'." "I'd say the faster we get the back-up generators on-line, the faster we can beam her to Sickbay," I said. Tom nodded, and I continued. "If there are any more leaks in the plasma conduits," I suggested, "we can avoid them by going through the corridors. I don't think the affected conduits go anywhere near them." Again Tom agreed. "Let's get going, then," he said. I led him to the exit which I'd gone through when I went looking for the medkit. The hatch was still lying on the deck in the corridor, and I nearly tripped over it in the darkness. The loud bang when I hit it with my boot startled the both of us very nearly to death -- the darkness was definitively getting on our nerves. After that Tom and I were careful to watch where we put our feet. "The captain must be wondering what's keeping us," Paris commented. I didn't feel any need to reply. All the while we were underway, we didn't encounter a single other crewmember. Normally, it would have been good to see how well everybody followed protocol and remained in their quarters or at their duty stations, but today, I could have done with some more company. Oh, Tom was good to have around in a crisis, but still I would have preferred, for instance, half of my Engineering staff. The doors to the room with the back-up generators didn't open simply because we stood in front of them, of course, and Tom and I had to pry them open manually. We had to push and pull pretty hard, it was the kind of work to make one hot and sweaty. That must have been why both of us failed to notice the increase in temperature until blue flames started leaping out into the corridor. =/\= end of part twenty-four =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-five" "Silence between the Storms, part eight" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 16 - 22 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Rain Robinson, possibly Voyager's best guest star ever. With a name like that, she just asked for it, didn't she? =/\= Those super-glue handholds to open doors were very useful, certainly, but once you had a crack large enough for your hands, the opening went smoother by simply pushing the doors themselves. That's how we did it; I put my hands between the doors high, and B'Elanna did the same low. To concentrate fully on making my muscles pay for their careful maintenance, I closed my eyes, for just a few seconds. I learned to regret that not much later. When I opened my eyes, I saw a very big burst of flame flying to the open door, undoubtedly attracted by the new oxygen the fire could now burn. B'Elanna gasped; she must have seen the flame at about the same time as I did. I didn't think, there was no time for that. I could only react. Quickly I slammed my left hand into B'Elanna's shoulder; I had to push her clear of the path of the flame. At the same instant that I pushed B'Elanna aside, I felt a hand connecting forcibly with my ribs. I guessed B'Elanna must have had the same idea as I had. She'd used all her Klingon strength and the impact of her hand nearly literally threw me away from the doorway. It was almost enough. Almost, but it came just a second -- an extremely painful second -- too late. The fire roared as it burst through the open door, into the corridor, and against the opposite wall. Thankfully, it did not expand sideways, further into the corridor, but rather shrunk back into the generator's room after that first explosion. B'Elanna's blow had thrown most of me clear of the flames, but my left arm, the one which I hoped had saved B'Elanna's life, was still extended across the doorway. Strangely enough, there was a short moment before I felt any pain in which I saw the flames engulf my arm. My hand was only a vague silhouette drowning in bright blue light. Then my nerves' frantic alarm reached my brain and for a moment I could see nothing. I screamed in pain as my momentum carried me away from the fire. If B'Elanna screamed as well, I didn't hear her, because my own sounds of agony drowned out everything else. When my butt hit the deck, the first, tiniest bit of sense was knocked back into me and I found my right hand trying to extinguish the flames still burning on the left sleeve of my uniform. Blisters formed on my thus far uninjured hand, but I hardly felt them. Compared to the burns on my left arm, blisters were nothing. In a moment of clarity in my tortured mind, I recalled putting the hypospray I had used to sedate Janine Lamont in a pocket of my uniform. Clenching my teeth together to resist the pain, I took it in my hand and with my thumb awkwardly pushed the buttons for the correct amount before I pressed it to my shoulder. I couldn't let the dose put me to sleep: I had no idea of what had happened to B'Elanna, she might need my help. Even if it had put her in more danger, I was glad that B'Ella had cared enough to try to push me to safety. Undoubtedly, she would have said that she would have done that for anyone, but I liked to imagine that there was something more. The hiss of the hypospray seemed this time not to indicate something flowing into me, but instead pure pain flowing out of me. I breathed a sigh in relief as my muscles relaxed for what seemed like the first time in hours, and I lay down on the deck. I still hurt: my ribs where B'Elanna had hit me, my butt where I'd hit the floor and the slight burns on my right hand. But I had blocked the pain from my burned arm, and I felt like I was brand new. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay there on the floor and doze off, as I very much wanted to. B'Elanna was still out there. Or so I hoped. After only a moment's rest I pushed myself up from the floor. Due to the sedative, I could only use my right arm, not my left, but I managed. The fire, by now, had completely retreated from the corridor. In the dim illumination that still filled the corridor, I thought I saw something -- make that someone -- move. My flashlight was half melted, so it wasn't much help, but when I got closer I could just make out that it was B'Elanna. She was lying there, writhing in pain, clutching an injured arm. But she was alive, and she needed my help. Wasting no more time, I hurried over to B'Elanna and pressed the hypospray to her shoulder in the same manner as I had with myself. I noted that the placement of B'Elanna's burns was almost identical to that of my own, except that hers were on her right arm. Apparently I had managed to push her clear of the burst of flame, too, and also not clear enough to save the arm extended to save me. When the sedative started to work, B'Elanna even relaxed onto the floor in the same way as I had. Her eyes opened slowly, but it apparently took her a moment to focus on what was in front of her, or rather, above her. "Tom!" B'Elanna said when she identified me. "Are you all right?" "About as bad as you are," I replied. She glanced at my fried arm and then shot me a look of sympathy. Considering what she had just felt herself, there was no doubt that it was completely honest. "Tell me something," I asked, and I even managed a lighthearted tone, "did I save your life a minute ago?" She nodded reluctantly, obviously remembering how I had badgered Chakotay for months after I had saved *his* life once. "Good," I said with a bright smile, "'cause you saved mine, too. I like my debts paid." B'Elanna grimaced. "Very funny, Paris," she answered. Awkwardly, she started to sit up. "Give me a hand in getting up. We still have a job to do." I admired the way she seemed to be able to ignore her injuries. "Give you a hand?" I looked doubtful. "Well, I don't know, Lt Torres. I've only got one usable one myself at the moment." "Paris!" "All right, all right!" I helped B'Elanna to her feet, and she stumbled to the doorway to look inside the generator room. I yawned and walked to her side... Well, all right, I stumbled, too. In the room we could see one of the generators in flames. The other four appeared still to be intact, but it didn't look like they would remain so for much longer -- and all of this lay beyond another part of the fire. "I guess they'll have to find somebody else for the job," I said. B'Elanna looked at me as if I had just claimed that one and one was three, and that that offended her. "Do you see any candidates?" she asked acidly. I conceded that she had a point there, but also commented that we were hardly fit for duty. "We've still got two working arms, haven't we?" countered B'Elanna. Stifling another yawn, I tried to come up with one more argument to get B'Elanna to safety, but I knew that she was right. I *did* wonder if we should risk starting machines so close to an open plasma fire, though. But again, B'Elanna had an answer ready for me. "That way at least the fire extinguisher system will come back on-line." I noticed that B'Elanna was yawning as well, and then I remembered something from my medical training. "Oh!" I said. "We'd better hurry, then. The painkiller I gave us is trying to put us to sleep right now, and it will succeed pretty soon." B'Elanna looked as if she was about to blame me for this latest problem, but I stopped her before she could say anything about it. "Hey, it's the best I could do, and it's better than the pain, isn't it?" As I had suspected, B'Elanna had no answer to that. Instead she walked over to the other side of the door, holding up her healthy arm to fend off the heat. There, she took something from behind a panel in the wall. Fortunately, B'Elanna's wristlight had survived, so she could see what she was doing. She took two things from behind the panel, in fact. She tossed one of the plasma extinguishers to me before picking up one for herself. I caught mine and nodded to B'Elanna that I understood and was ready to go. Those handheld things would never be enough to actually extinguish all of the burning plasma, but, with just a little bit of luck, they would be enough to clear us a path to move through. B'Elanna took a deep breath and nodded back. I believed neither of us trusted our voice to speak, not while preparing to go into the fire after what we had both just felt. When we moved into the room, I found that cutting a path through the flames was actually easier than I'd been afraid it would be. It turned out that the fire blocking our path was only a thin wall of flames, probably only burning on the plasma that had shot to the opening door. B'Elanna and I went forward cautiously, B'Elanna in the lead, and we wove our extinguishers at anything that came close to us. In no time at all, we stood safely on the other side. Oh, the trip had still *seemed* to last for an eternity, but I knew that it really hadn't. For a brief moment, B'Elanna and I both stood still, dazed. We were relieved that we'd made it through, but surprised that it had gone so easily. Then I yawned again, and the moment passed. B'Elanna tossed aside her plasma extinguisher and started walking to the generator that was next in line, barely five meters from the flames. She didn't say a word, or even look at me. I did look at *her*, making sure that she didn't have any new burns. Fortunately, I didn't see any. Naturally, I followed B'Elanna, but I kept the extinguisher with me. We were still far too close to the fire to my taste, and I stopped having fun with taking unnecesary risks a long time ago. For a moment B'Elanna studied the console, then she typed in the correct sequence of buttons. She could, of course, only use her left hand, so it went a bit slowly and awkwardly, but she managed. B'Elanna stopped and sighed... and yawned. "That's it," she said. "Now all we have to do is wait. Power will come back up in a minute or so." "`That's it'?" I repeated incredulously. "Do you mean that we came through all *that*" -- I made a broad gesture in the direction of the fire -- "and now we're finished already?" A smile tugged at the corners of B'Elanna's lips. "You sound disappointed, Paris," she said. "You could go through the fire a few more times if you really want to. Just don't expect me to come with you." I pretended to think about it for a few moments. "No," I said finally, shaking my head. "I think I'll just wait and think about how I'm going to tell Harry about how I was a big hero again and how I saved the girl." B'Elanna growled at me, but it did not sound very sincere. "I hope you're referring to ensign Lamont, Paris," she spoke in a threatening voice. "Well," I countered, not bothering to hide my smug smile now, "I *did* push you out of the way of those flames, B'Elanna, didn't I?" The woman who I was now feeling closer to than ever started to say something, but she was interrupted by another yawn. Before she could start again the lights -- after a far too long absence -- finally turned on again. =/\= end of part twenty-five =/\= "RAIN, Part Twenty-six" "Silence between the Storms, part nine" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 24 - 26 August 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Jerry Goldsmith for the Theme. Voyager wouldn't have been the same without him. I know that that can be taken in a lot of ways, but I really mean it positively. =/\= I was startled for only a moment when the lights came back on -- after all, I *had* been expecting it to happen -- and then I immediately took the opportunity to get rid of my slight feeling of guilt at joking about Janine Lamont's condition. I tapped my commbadge. "Torres to Sickbay," I said. "Activate the Emergency Medical Hologram." At the same time the lights had come back on, the automatic fire extinguishers had started to work, too, and a loud hissing filled the air, replacing the crackling of the fire. I looked at Tom while waiting for the response. He looked at me, too. He looked tired, but a broad smile of relief covered his face, mirroring my own expression. There was something more, though. Something in his eyes as he watched me. There was a special blue shine in there, conveying feelings which I couldn't quite place, but which, I realized, lifted my heart to see them... That sounded very melodramatic didn't it? Anyway, I liked what I saw. The dullness that had been in the blue of his eyes earlier was completely gone. "Please state the natu --" the Doctor started. I found that for a moment, I couldn't speak, but fortunately, no one noticed, because Tom immediately interrupted the Holodoc. "Doc!" he said. "You've got incoming wounded with plasma burns, pretty bad ones, I think fourth or fifth degree." While speaking, Tom showed no sign of his previous joyous mood, but instead was completely business. The Doctor sighed. "Do I assume correctly, Mr Paris, that you are one of these wounded?" he responded. Now the merry Paris was back. "Naturally," he said in his most irritating voice. "Stand by, Doc, we'll be right there." Since I was the only one of us who still had a commbadge, I tapped it again. "Torres to Transporter Room One. Medical Emergency. Three to beam directly to Sickbay," I said this time. I barely got it all out before I yawned again. But instead of the hum and lights of the transporter beam or the question where the third person was, crewman Gerron's voice came over the commlink hesitantly. "Uh, Lieutenant," he said, "this is Gerron, I'm on duty in the Transporter Room." "Yes, Gerron," I replied impatiently, "what is it?" "The power drain damaged the transductor coils here," Gerron explained, "and now they're burnt almost entirely through. I can give you one safe transport, but after that, I can't give you any guarantee that you'll rematerialize in Sickbay, or anywhere, for that matter." I was momentarily stunned. Somehow, this fit in with everything else that had happened. Then I noticed that Tom was laughing silently, and despite the seriousness of the situation, I joined him. "Just our luck, right?" Tom remarked, shaking his head from side to side. "Right," I replied. "Lieutenants?" sounded from the commbadge. Gerron sounded thoroughly confused. "It's all right, Tem," Tom told him. "Beam ensign Lamont to Sickbay, she's in a jefferies tube near our position. The lieutenant and I will just have to get there the old-fashioned way." "Aye, sir. I've locked on to the ensign. Good luck, and Gerron out." Tom then shot a look at the now dying flames and tried to make an extravagant bow, motioning for me to proceed to the doors. Unfortunately, halfway through the bow, he nearly fell over from sleepiness. It set me off laughing, and soon I was struggling to stay on my feet as well. Now that the adrenalin was leaving our systems, the sedative was rapidly catching up with us. Still laughing, we started walking. I couldn't understand how we could be so merry while we were so grievously wounded at the same time. It must have been that we had survived. When I stumbled due to the last of my laughing just outside the generator room, in the corridor, Tom caught my elbow to keep me from falling. "Here," he said, and yawned, "lean on me, B'Elanna. That way we can keep each other on our feet." I wrenched loose my arm and, despite the fact that I was starting to have trouble keeping my eyes open, I snapped: "I can walk by myself, Paris." "Well," Tom responded, "maybe *you* can" -- he sounded terribly sceptical, but I decided not to press the point -- "but *some* of us here," Tom continued, "are about to drop to the floor and close our eyes. Which, by the way, would *not* be a good idea, because by the time we'd wake up, the sedative would have worn off completely." I sighed deeply, giving up all hope of dissuading Tom and let him lean against me, if only to stop him from whining about it. We walked all the way to the turbolift like that, Tom's right leaning against my left and vice versa, keeping our injuries clear. I had to admit -- though not to Tom, of course -- it *did* feel good to have something to lean against while walking. Still, I was glad that no one had come out into the corridor yet. I knew enough of gossip and rumours about Paris to know what people would make of *this*. That thought amused me. The entire idea was quite ridiculous, wasn't it? I practically jumped when I suddenly felt Tom's hand on my right shoulder. After a moment's thought, though, I didn't do anything violent to discourage it. The feeling of companionship at what we'd just been through lingered, but after a while I began to feel more and more uncomfortable. When we reached the turbolift, it was thankfully waiting for us. Inside, I stepped away from Tom as fast as I could and dropped myself against the wall. I didn't sit down, because I was afraid that I might not be able to get up again. "Sickbay," Tom ordered. At the quiet tone of his voice I looked up at his face. Tom was staring at a point beyond the wall, focused on some inner view. He wasn't exactly smiling, but his face showed that he felt that something good had happened, something he hadn't expected at all. It was a rare thing that Tom's emotions were so readable on his face, and I wondered what this surprise could have been. The trip in the turbolift took only a minute, and we travelled it in silence. When we arrived, we walked across the last corridor into Sickbay. Without a word being said, I thought that Tom understood that I did not want to be seen leaning on him, because though we walked side by side, he didn't come *too* close. We were both relieved when we saw ensign Lamont lying on a biobed, with Kes and the Doctor standing over her. Only Kes greeted us. Lamont looked much better already, and Kes was steadily running a dermal regenerator over the burns on her face. Without any urging from the Doctor, Tom and I lay down on two other biobeds. Then the Holodoc came over to us and without saying a word made a scan of us with a tricorder. Tom and I exchanged an amused glance with half-closed eyes at the Doctor's not at all unusual lack of bedside manner. The Doctor harumphed, still not looking up from his readings. "Mr Paris," he said, "I *was* going to commend you on the first aid you rendered to ensign Lamont, but now I find *this*. Tell me, in your *wide* medical knowledge, have you ever come across the term `overdose'?" "That does sound familiar, Doc," Tom said sleepily. "I would certainly hope so!" the EMH said. "Lieutenant, your system is literally flooded with a sedative that was specifically designed to be applied to relatively *small* injuries, so that the injured individuals... Mr Paris?" the Doctor asked hesitantly. "Mr Paris!" Unnoticed, my eyelids had slid shut. With a considerable effort, I lifted them a bit and saw that Tom's eyes were also closed. "I think he's asleep, Doctor," I told the EMH. Or perhaps Tom was merely pretending to be, until he finally truly was. Sounded like a good idea to me. "Ms Torres? Ms Torres!" =/\= Thank Kahless, the damage the shipwide loss of power had caused was extremely limited. After two days of hard work, things were mostly back to normal. The various plasma fires that Tom and I had discovered were the worst of it by far. Tom. Even standing in the middle of a busy-as-usual Engineering with an entire armload of reports to be read, I couldn't help thinking about him. There were the things that he had told me about his past before we'd entered the jefferies tubes, and the feeling of camaraderie we had so easily shared. A lot had changed since we'd come aboard Voyager, and Tom had been nothing but an obnoxious pig. Well, that was all I saw, all he let anyone see, anyway. But strangely enough, I didn't much think about those things. Mostly, I just thought about Tom. Nothing specific about him. Just Tom. Frustrated, I shook my head to clear it. I still wanted to find out more about that hotshot pilot, but daydreaming about nonsense wasn't the way to do that. I noticed Sue Nicoletti sitting on a console not far away, and walked over to her. "Taking a break, ensign?" I asked her. She looked up at me, startled. "Lieutenant! I'm sorry, I --" I put up a hand, forestalling her. "No need to apologize," I said. "As long as you get finished what you're supposed to do, it's all right. I could do with a break myself." I laid down the datapads with reports I was carrying and leaned against the console beside Nicoletti. "Tell me, Sue," I said after a moment, "Is there any interesting gossip around at the moment?" "Excuse me?" Sue replied, surprised that I wanted to know. I'd never been interested before. "You know," I said with a shrug, trying to sound casual. "Has anyone won any large prizes in the betting pools lately? Who's Paris' latest conquest? That sort of thing." Nicoletti shot me a quick look. She didn't say anything out loud, but her face said it all. `Ah, so *that*'s what this is all about!' I almost blushed as she looked right through me. "Well?" I asked. "Tom the Conquerer isn't conquering very much anymore these days," Sue told me. "Oh?" Now *I* was surprised. "How come? Did the last of the women on Voyager finally get the warning?" "On the contrary," Sue replied, "Tom has always been too much of a gentleman to his `conquests' for his bad reputation to hold. No, he just slowly started to lose interest, and a few weeks ago, he stopped chasing me and all the others completely." "Any clues on why?" I wondered, intrigued. Sue looked at me with a mysterious smile on her face, and said: "Perhaps you could find that out yourself, lieutenant." And then she got up and walked away. Now what was that supposed to mean? =/\= end of part twenty-six =/\= end of Silence between the Storms =/\= #Ooh-ah ah ah# +Shelter on a rainy day+ #You may need me Like I need you #I see clouds gathering in the sky When my worries fill my mind Watercolors all begin to fade I wanna be with you If it starts to rain 'Cause I can hide in your arms So safe and warm With you as my protection To help me through the storm ooh #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You washed my tears away yeah #Yeah yeah #If inside your heart it starts to rain Just call me up I'll ease the pain You don't ever need to be alone When the wi-ind begins to moan 'Cause whenever you may need me Like I need you Then let me be right by your side In love we'll see it throu-ough #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You give me shelter on a rainy day (On a rainy day-ay) You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey (Ooh you give me shelter) You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away# +A shelter on a rainy day A lovely warm place For you and I to stay Mm what you thinking? Don't tell me no lies Because your eyes are blinkin' There's a place girl Down deep in my heart You know the feeling A relationship destroyed I send my love without delay 'Cause you know I've got A shelter on a rainy day+ #You give me shelter Hey-e-ey Your love has washed them all away Mm-mm #You give me shelter on a rainy day You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away #You give me shelter on a rainy day (On a rainy day-ay) You're all that I am needin' When clouds are turning grey (Ooh you give me shelter) You give me shelter on a rainy day My tears have lost their meaning Love has washed them all away-ay#