The BLTS Archive- Wrong Again by Joanne Collins (luchenbackoutlaw@gmail.com) --- Please do not distribute, archive, etc, without my permission. May be archived on the ASC archive, the CPSG archive, and R'Rain's Slash Archive only. Please do not link to the story without my permission. I've noticed than in an awful lot of C/P stories (as well as just about any other P or T story that they break up in), the P/T break-up is handled in one of four ways. Either the relationship never happened at all (not strictly a break-up as such, of course), it got so far and they realised that they just didn't have that much in common (the all too often used line: "It just didn't work out."), B'Elanna goes ballistic when Tom finds someone else, or B'Elanna finds someone else first and breaks Tom's heart. I've used the first two but... none of these are particularly, well, *interesting* on their own without something to back them up, and some writers seem to use them only on their own. There's usually very little exploration of *why* the relationship didn't work. I do realise that the focus is on getting Tom or B'Elanna together with the other party, but it seems that the relationship that they *do* have in canon (I'm not talking about the romantic relationship here, either) is rather unexplored, not to mention B'Elanna's relationship with the other person. After all, she once had romantic feelings for Chakotay and she and Harry are very close in canon. This story is an attempt to address why a relationship between two people who, on paper, have no reason for their relationship not to work out, doesn't work out. I just feel that relationships ending should have more than the cursory explorations given in most fanfic. Please note: I'm not saying this is the case in every story. Just a few too many of them, IMHO, and the stories that don't treat break-ups as cursory do tend (IMHO) to show up the stories that don't. Relationships, even if they're not what you expected them to be, *hurt* when they don't work out. Song lyrics and title from Wrong Again. It can be found on Martina McBride's album Evolution. The events in this story take place during late fourth season. --- From the day we met... You made me forget... All my fears... --- When I first got together with Tom, it was like my past had never happened. All the fears that were present in my past relationships seemed to evaporate. He *wanted* the combination of Klingon and human, he never tried to force me to be one or the other like so many others did. Even my mother wanted me to be a Klingon more than she wanted me to be a human, although I know she never *said* so. But Tom...gods, he was so sweet about my dual nature. I think that was what I actually fell in love with, his non-judgementalness over the bad stuff in my childhood. Well, that and his kisses. So passionate, but tender at the same time. --- You knew just what to say... And you kissed away... All my tears... --- The first time we made love, I cried. I haven't cried in years, you just *can't* when you're fighting a battle like we were in the Maquis, even, or really especially, when someone dies. Because you'd be crying *all* the time if that were the case. And on Voyager, I've been more angry than sad much of the time. And Tom knew exactly what to say, how to reassure me, how to hold me and comfort me. He made me forget the tears with kisses and hugs and...other things. But he always acknowledged them later. I thought we would be forever. Or at least as much of it as we were granted alive. --- I knew this time I had finally found... Someone to build my life around... Who'd be a lover and a friend... After all my heart had put me through... I knew that it was safe with you... And what we had would never end... Wrong again... --- I really thought Tom was the man I'd been searching for all of my life. The one that I secretly dreamed of, as a little girl, and even much later. After all of the disappointments, all of the relationships that didn't work out, I thought Tom was the one that I could rely on to last the distance. I thought Tom would be there for me as a lover as well as a friend, that I could trust my heart in his hands. I thought that we would last as long as the journey home, and beyond. I was wrong. --- Everybody swore... They'd seen this before... We'd be fine... And you'd come to see that you still loved me... In good time... --- Tom never told me he loved me. He never said the words. That was important to me. I held off on it for a long time, only actually saying it when we thought we were about to die. I almost wish I had held off longer, because soon after that... Soon after that, Tom realised that he had feelings for Chakotay. He didn't know what they were, but he was thinking about him all the time, even when we were together. He didn't know if it was just a crush, feelings of lust, or maybe something more, although he thought it was just a crush. Until he found out that he wasn't the only one having those feelings. Gods, if I'd known then what I know now, would I have brought them together? I know that after the spy thing their relationship had been strained at best, although they had managed to get back a reasonable working relationship. I wanted it to be more, though. They were the two men who mattered to me the most in the world, and I wanted them to be more than just work colleagues. So I suggested they work on a holoprogram together, and they discovered that they did feel more than just animosity for each other. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself, really. I confided in Harry, and he said to me that he had experimented with men when he was younger, but Tom never had. Apparently his father didn't think it was 'the done thing' for an Admiral's son. Harry thought that this was just Tom's finding out that there *are* other options than women, and he would never forgive himself if he didn't explore the other option. And Harry had settled down with Libby, although he is considering the other options on Voyager, being a limited population has it's drawbacks, and lack of choice in sexual partners can be considered to be one of them. Gods know I've heard others make that observation. But Harry seems to be spending an *awful* lot of time with Ayala lately... I knew what he meant about the experimentation. In the Maquis, and even before, I'd had some experience with women, starting back when I was a teenager. That was just teenage curiousity and exploration, but later relationships were more fulfilling. There was one woman, a Trill, on Deep Space Nine...if I'd ever been able to just visit there, and not be procuring supplies... I felt for Tom, never having had the chance to find out what love with your own gender could be like. And I couldn't blame him for wanting to find out. --- And they said there's nothing you can do... It's something that he's going through... It happens to a lot of men... And I told myself that they were right... That you'd wake up and see the light... I'd just have to wait till then... Wrong again... --- There wasn't really any advice Harry could give me about whether or not to worry. He said that it was, as far as he knew, all perfectly normal and healthy for a man to be curious, and I suppose it is. I bought into that theory, anyway. In large part because that's what I wanted to believe, of course, but it might have worked that way... If Chakotay hadn't been almost destroyed when we found out about the destruction of the Maquis. That crisis was the crisis that tempered their relationship. It was the make or break event. I knew if they stayed together after that, they were in it for the long haul. And that's exactly what happened, of course. Did I resent them? Not really. I always knew that it was a possibility, that they would realise that it wasn't all hormones and wild sex (the details I got second-hand through Harry confirmed that much), but I wanted to believe that they would emerge just friends. Still, at least that was how things worked out for me and Tom. --- And it seemed to me the pain would last... My chance for happiness had passed... And nothing waited 'round the bend... --- I thought Tom was my last chance for real love. I went back to the warp core, which never let me down like he did. I was quite prepared to settle down alone, I thought all that had passed me by when Tom left. I should have learned from Tom never to think things will work out how they appear to be heading, but my heart and spirit were too sore to allow me to think about that. --- I was sure I'd never find someone... To heal the damage you had done... And my poor heart would never mend... Wrong again... --- I really thought all of my options on Voyager were exhausted. Harry and I knew we weren't right for each other, Tom and Chakotay were together, Neelix is sweet, but I don't think of him that way, Vorik wasn't an option and Tuvok...I wouldn't have rejected him, but he and Vorik are more suited. Logically speaking, anyway. Only Vulcans would apply logic to love. And as for the vague fantasies about Kathryn Janeway? That's all they could be. Especially as I know how Dalby feels about her. So I resigned myself to being alone, mending my heart, for a lot of years. Of course, there was one person I never considered. Even though I could appreciate the beauty, the relationship we shared was rather antagonistic. I don't know who was more surprised when we ended up kissing in a Jefferies tube, Seven or me. Yes, Seven Of Nine, Annika Hansen, former Borg, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and she fell in love with me despite our differences. Maybe even *because* of them, because it meant she saw *me*, not just another irrelevant humanoid. I don't know for sure, but I do know that I would never have found Seven if Tom and Chakotay hadn't been together. I'm beginning to believe in destiny. ---- The End