Disclaimers, ratings and warnings are in Part 1.
THE BADLANDERS
PART SEVENTEEN
Kathryn felt a shiver run down her spine. Tom had just begged her to let him die and on the point of telling him that she couldn't let her brother die, her body stilled before it was hit by a violent shudder. She turned abruptly to the doctor, who frowned when he saw her expression.
"Is something the matter, Captain?"
A flash, an image and a stinging pain at the base of her skull was enough to indicate something was wrong and that it had to do with Chakotay. Right on the heels of that thought came a hail from the bridge.
"Suder to sickbay. Doctor, could you transport Captain Chakotay immediately to sickbay? He has collapsed."
"Chakotay..." Kathryn's soft whisper came, her own head bearing down towards her chest so heavy the pain was. Her vision blurred for a few maddening seconds and, exercising superhuman effort, she managed to walk to the biobed. Megan was busy at another workstation in sickbay, had left the bed right after the doctor forbade her to get up, so the biobed was unoccupied.
A second later, Chakotay was lifted on the biobed and Krell instantly placed a cortical stimulator against his temple. He looked pale and again, a green-yellow substance oozed from the corner of his mouth. Not only that, it seeped slowly from his ears and nostrils too. Chakotay's body was completely still and for a heart stopping second Kathryn thought he was dead.
After scanning Chakotay for synaptic activity, Krell frowned heavily. Kathryn's heart sank.
"Doctor, is he - ?"
"I'm afraid we may not have much time, Captain. Somehow there is a vacuum - small enough to be missed - in his memory centre, as if he had been..."
"Lobotomised?"
"I don't think so, Captain," Krell replied, working at wiping away the ooze from Chakotay's nostrils, mouth and ears. "It's more like Captain Chakotay is experiencing the loss of those memories triggered by his meeting with you, most likely. Although as I have been led to understand, it is not something that would revert naturally to him... He is not an amnesiac in that sense."
"We may be too late..." she said, rubbing the back of her head. She closed her eyes, trying desperately to remain alert. "The procedure for the memory integration has been set up on Vulcan, Doctor. Believe me, if it could have been done here..."
"I understand, Captain. I'm keeping Captain Chakotay in this state and have arrested the flow of this ooze which I can only think must be toxins that have built up in his system since he entered the Badlands, how long ago?"
"Three years..."
"A long time for a man to sink into this world not engineered by him."
Krell gave her a meaningful look. Kathryn nodded.
"You can say that again, Doctor. That is the tragedy..." she whispered. "That is the tragedy..."
"Captain, if we can get out of here as soon as possible. You mentioned a Vulcan Science vessel waiting..."
Kathryn stepped forward, took Chakotay's hand in hers. She leaned over to plant a gentle kiss against his cheek. Her eyes stung with tears.
"I won't be long now...my love..." she whispered.
She had hardly straightened up when she was alerted to a commotion at the sick bay doors. She swung round, in time to see Torres and a Bajoran female rushing in, followed by two men, one who wore an unbelievably tight shorts and the other in Maquis gear looking like an animal.
"There! That's her," Torres shouted, rushing forward at the same time and grabbing her, clamping fingers round her throat. Kathryn choked, experiencing several blinding flashes.
I
am going to die...
She had seen B'Elanna before, had been subjected to her slow seduction, but this look of pure hatred unsettled her momentarily as the Klingon growled her wrath. Kathryn heard a scuffle at the other end of the sickbay and from the corner of her eye saw the Bajoran female slumping to the floor. Tuvok had the Maquis by the neck.
"Die, bitch in heat!" Torres screamed. Kathryn felt every breath being squeezed from her as Torres pulled her towards the doors. She couldn't breathe, the objects in sickbay taking on grotesque shapes. "Die!" Torres screamed again.
Kathryn felt dizzy, knew she was going to pass out within seconds. She tried to prise B'Elanna fingers from her throat, but the woman had a vice grip. She was much stronger than Kathryn. Just then the Klingon released her suddenly. Kathryn stumbled, but she took in deep gulps of air, coughing at the same time, her eyes stinging from the strain of having tried to fight the Klingon off.
But what happened next, would remain with her for the rest of her life. Tom Paris, still weak from his beating at the hands of Harry and Nick, got up from his bed, grabbed Torres by her dark brown hair and let fly with his fist. Kathryn heard a crack and knew Tom had just broken her jaw. Torres sank to her knees. She tried to get up, was too groggy to stand, staggering about. Torres tried to lunge at her, but this time, released from the vice grip, Kathryn managed to side-step the enraged Klingon. She wanted to kill this woman, but old Federation ideals still guided her. Besides, she didn't have the heart. She pushed Torres away from her, noticing in her peripheral vision that the Bajoran, the tightly clad male and remaining animal-like Maquis were all lying unconscious on the floor.
Tom meanwhile had rushed to one of the cabinets, pressed a phial in a hypospray and reached for Torres, grabbing her mane of hair in his free hand. Torres looked aghast at him, trying to speak, the words a mumble because of her broken jaw. But Kathryn was certain she knew what Torres was saying.
"Paris! Whose side are you on?"
And she had a bewildered look as Tom pressed the hypospray with a soft hiss into her neck.
The injured woman stumbled towards Kathryn. Hands reached for her, long fingers that wanted to curl themselves round her neck and strangle her again. Then B'Elanna's eyes rolled, rolled right away from their sockets until only the whites were visible. Torres, stunned, clutched at her throat, uttered a guttural sound before keeling over backwards, her head hitting the floor first with a sickening thud. As if in dream she watched this woman who for a brief period terrorised her.
Strange, she thought, how Torres's body lay sprawled, like a broken rag doll, arms and legs at odd angles with no symmetry of shapes, as if her life, bent out of shape ended the same way in death.
Kathryn looked at the doctor who bent down and opened the medical tricorder. She knew without him having to check first, that Torres was dead.
"She's dead," Krell pronounced.
"Tom?" Kathryn said his name as she moved to him.
Tom just stood there, the hypospray virtually hanging from limp fingers. Kathryn remembered absently how they told her Tom had killed Jenny Delaney in cold blood. B'Elanna Torres, Klingon, Maquis, in love with Chakotay, but having gone too far, was perhaps even more cold-bloodedly despatched than the unfortunate Jenny.
It was the same man who would never leave her alone in Federation space, who called her his Daddy's whore, called her mother names, who even as his father subjected him to his own brand of cruel, inhuman sexual practices, still thought of her as the villain who ruined his mother's life. How could she blame him? He wanted to die when Elizabeth and Rowena died, wanted to be taken with them to the only place where Owen Paris could never touch them again. Owen had diabolically paraded the boy Tom as his prize as his mother and sister lay dying. How could she blame him? Owen influenced him, kept him sleeping in his bed and sexually abused the defenceless child for years.
But Tom grew into a young man. The last time she had seen him had been when she had heard Tom threaten his father. She had been on her way to Owen's office and had stopped just outside. Tom had exited the office, rushed past without notcing her, his attractive face darkened by a thunderous cloud.
The way Jenny was killed and now B'Elanna, Kathryn was certain that Tom wouldn't hesitate to kill his own father.
What Tom knew of her history with Chakotay he must have kept quiet about. They had been together in the Badlands for more than two years at least. Was it something Tom could use at a later point to his advantage? She and Chakotay had gone into seclusion years before that to get away from the negative influences of the Parises and other admirals who resented Chakotay's rise through the ranks, his absolute inherent sense of honour and his morals and later, his open censure of particularly Owen Paris's licentious living, his criminal behaviour and the terrible hold over his son who was forced to live as his father's boy lover for years.
Tom who must have known what his father had done to Chakotay. But Chakotay had gone bad instantly after the rape of his memory, for she believed all manner of evil had been supplanted in him. It was that Chakotay she had come to hate, for the last time she had seen him in Federation space, he hadn't recognised her, and he was already known to have violated several women, and killed one or two Starfleet officers.
Now, Tom Paris who hated her stood before her and her eyes fell upon his face, a face different from the old anger, the atrocities he committed, the old hatred he had for her.
"Captain... Torres would never have rested. She wanted me to kill you. I - "
"What, Tom?"
"Told her straight off Chakotay wasn't for her. Chakotay doesn't know that he knows you, Captain. Torres sensed he was lost to her from the moment he saw you, down there in the cargo bay. That's when her scheming started. She wouldn't have rested," he repeated his words. 'Besides..."
His mouth moved into a glimmer of a quirk, one that was spent the moment Megan moved into his field of vision. He gave a sigh. Kathryn knew that they all had a lot to answer for, that forgiveness was going to be the rarest of all gifts. But she was dying to know what Tom was going to say anyway. So she coaxed him, tried to get the quirky smile back.
"Besides?"
"You're my sister..."
And she had never seen Tom look more grave or remorseful than when he claimed her as his kin at last.
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END PART SEVENTEEN