The BLTS Archive - On My Own
by Lizzie

---

DISCLAIMER: No one's name gets mentioned (so there, Paramount!), but
the lyrics to _On My Own_ are copyright of Alain Boubil Music, Ltd.

The story's rather light on plot, swearing and sex, though there is a
brief reference to "gentle passionate love" between two men, hence the
PG rating. Song lyrics are encased in slashes (and no, it's not
because I twisted the song to refer to a slash pairing).

---
//And now the night is near. Now I can make believe he's here.//
---

Everyone says that Voyager is a twenty-four hour ship, that there's no
such thing as night here. We've got the three eight hour shifts on
duty daily: alpha, beta, and gamma. Someone awake at all hours of the
day and night. Everything's open for business, the mess hall, the
holodeck, the infirmary. Of course, none of that's true. We still keep
to Earth times, almost as if we're afraid that by admitting that our
lives are no longer ruled by the cycles of the sun and the moon we're
admitting that we'll never again get to see that same sun and moon.
Gamma shift is staffed by a skeleton crew, Neelix closes up the mess
hall at 2100 hours, and at about midnight, the temperature drops and
the lights dim in the hallways. It saves power, you see. Why waste
energy heating the corridors in the middle of the night, when no one's
going to be in them?

---
//Sometimes I walk alone at night when everybody else is sleeping.
I think of him and then I'm happy with the company I'm keeping.
The city goes to bed And I can live inside my head.//
---

I don't like the cold of the hallways. My thoughts are cold enough as
it is. I keep dreaming about him, and I know that there's no point
because I can never have him. I've stopped trying to sleep, because my
dreams, my innocent dreams about me loving him and him loving me, are
nightmares to me now.

I wish I knew how he truly felt about me. Oh, I know that he likes me;
I'm his best friend, after all. But what does that mean to him? Does
it mean the same to him as it does to me? Does it mean that he wants
to take my hand and make gentle passionate love to me all through the
night? Does it mean that he wants to spend all of eternity in my arms?

---
//On my own, pretending he's beside me.
All alone I walk with him till morning.
Without him, I feel his arms around me.//
---

Or does it mean that he wants to talk with me, laugh with me, joke
with me, never once scratching the surface that hides my feelings for
him? Does it mean that we'll play a couple of games of pool together,
just because we're friends and that's what friends do? Does it mean I
have to listen to him when he tells me about the love he has for
another? Does it mean he has to torture me night after night,
confessing his deep abiding love for someone other than me? Does it
mean that I have to hate her, hate this woman for whom he feels so
much, simply because he cannot feel the same way about me?

---
//And when I lose my way I close my eyes and he has found me.//
---

But he wouldn't want that. It isn't right. She's my friend too, and I
do care about her, even if I feel so jealous of her I want to throw
up.

---
//In the rain the pavement shines like silver.
All the lights are misty in the river.
In the darkness the trees are full of starlight
and all I see is him and me for ever and forever.//
---

I have such elaborate dreams of us together. Home, on Earth. Or home,
on Voyager. A home on any one of the dozens of hospitable planets
we've run across on our journey! It doesn't matter where; as long as
he's there with me, it will be home.

---
//And I know it's only in my mind that I'm talking to myself and not
to him.
And although I know that he is blind, still I say, there's a way for
us!//
---

How I wish I could tell him. How I wish I could let him know how I
feel. But if I did, what then? Would I lose the best friend I ever
had? Would I lose my one and only love? Would I lose this man who is,
right now, my only reason for living?

---
//I love him, but when the night is over he is gone, the river's just
a river.
Without him the world around me changes.
The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers.//
---

Of course, I know that I don't really have him. His heart belongs to
another, and I can never really have him the way I want him. Why do I
still persist in deluding myself?

---
//I love him, but every day I'm learning.
All my life I've only been pretending.
Without me his world will go on turning, a world that's full of
happiness that I have never known.//
---

I know. Oh, I do know. It's all a ridiculous fantasy I've created in
order to convince myself that I'm not alone. But I am alone, and this
fantasy is all I have to comfort myself...

---
//I love him.//
---

Oh, how I love him.

---
//I love him.//
---

More than words could ever say.

---
//I love him... but only on my own.//
---

The End