The BLTS Archive - Private Moment
by DianeB

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Okay to archive; please keep my name attached.

Author's Note:  This is a sequel to Boadicea's story "Name." Go read
that and anything else of hers you can get hold of.

Disclaimer:  Paramount owns it all.  Always has.  Always will.  I
accept this.

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It hit me like a ton of bricks whose name she cries out as she comes.
God, how stupid could I have been?  All those weeks I spent fiddling
around, finally using the filters, while the blatantly obvious passed
me by.  Guess I was just too close to it.

I was drowsing on my couch after my shift.  My original intention had
been to finish the program I was developing for hydroponics, and I had
actually been making some progress towards that end.  Then I began to
nod off, and I was at the point of falling completely asleep, when
that mystery name floated to the surface of my brain just as easily as
oil on water.  It wasn't two syllables at all.

I came awake so violently that the datapadd in my lap went flying.  My
heart was hammering in my chest, pumping adrenaline into my system
with wild abandon.

I jumped from the couch and ran to my terminal, plopping in the chair
in front of it and quaking so badly I could barely speak.  When I
finally calmed down enough to get the computer on, I opened the file
and sat there watching it without breathing, waiting for that final
moment.  "Ah," she said, just as she always did, then she turned and
said into the sheets, "Nika."  Not two syllables.  Three.

*Annika.*  I sat stunned in front of the screen.  She cried out Seven
of Nine's given name, for god's sake!  Why had I assumed it was a
man's name?  Why had I assumed anything about that name?  I smiled
then in spite of my jitters, as a stray thought came to me. *Certainly
might explain why she and Chakotay weren't together.*

I pounded the couch with my fist, all fired up again with thinking
about it.  I wasn't sure what to do now.  Having this knowledge was
infinitely worse than not.  At least before, when I saw her, I could
pretend that my little recording was nothing, a fake, and, therefore,
not really hurting anyone.  With this knowledge, things changed,
became too real.

If I added to it the rumors that flew about her reasons for risking
everything to get Seven back from the Borg Queen, I knew I couldn't
pretend anymore.

There was something else, too, something that kept nagging at me, an
elusive thought about *something*, but it kept slipping away before I
could grab hold of it.

Trouble was, I'd really gotten used to that little recording.  Not
that I'm some kind of pervert or anything, it was just that when I
watched it, watched her masturbate, I felt less distanced from the big
chair on the Bridge.  And now, in a strange way, I felt fiendishly
comforted by the knowledge that she'd called out for Seven, for
someone she could not have just like the rest of us at one point or
another in our lives.  It made her more human, that's all.

I argued with myself about my options.  Basically, I had two.  Tell
her.  Or not tell her.

Logically, I started with the first option.  I could tell her.  It was
not that I was scared of her.  It was just that in order for a
nameless crewman such as myself to gain a private audience with her,
I'd be required to follow a string of Starfleet protocols a mile long.
The very first one was to see Chakotay personally and state, actually
state, my reason for wanting a meeting.

But running interference was part of Chakotay's job as First Officer.
I certainly couldn't hold that against him.  It wouldn't do to have
every lowlife on the ship running to her with his or her hare-brained
ideas or insubordinate complaints, would it?

So.  I managed to convince myself I was not scared to see her.  I
really believed that until I went into the bathroom and checked my
reflection.  Who was I kidding?  I was scared to death!

Standing in front of my bathroom mirror, I took a deep breath and
imagined I lost my fear and got past Chakotay's third degree.  How
exactly did I think I was going to proceed?  No matter how I phrased
it, she'd think I was completely whacked, that I made that recording
myself to use against her in some kind of bizarre blackmail scheme.
And if by some miracle I could convince her that was not the case,
then what?

She'd immediately want to know how the recording came to be, if I
hadn't made it.  God, she'd probably order me to get started on it
right away.  Is that when I'd offer up my pet theories?  "Yes,
Captain, the computer is spying on you; the bioneural circuitry is in
love with you."

Or how about blaming it on that body-snatching alien, Steth?  Or
Tuvok.

She'd drive herself crazy, probably Torres, too, trying to figure out
if the circuitry was sentient.  She'd probably never trust Tuvok
again.  Hell, she'd probably never trust Voyager again, and that would
be unthinkable.  I might only be a nameless blueshirt, but even I'm
not so dense that I couldn't see she had gelpack fluid in her veins.

She might decide to buy the theory about Steth, since he was a major
bad guy and he was gone now, but, again, how could that be a good
thing?  If he was able to make that sort of recording, she'd think
anybody could, and we'd be back to square one.

I shook my head and got up for a cup of coffee, still feeling as
though I was missing something.  I was reaching for my mug when that
missing something hit me pretty much the same way the name thing did.
I let the mug fall heavily back onto the replicator pad, narrowly
missing my hand when some of the hot liquid sloshed out over the rim.
I don't remember walking back to the couch, only that when I got
there, I fell just as heavily onto it as I had replaced my coffee.

The reason I was playing around with all those idiotic theories in the
first place was because I obviously had *another* theory, one I
guessed I must have had since the moment I first watched the
recording.  But I knew immediately it was a theory I would definitely
*not* mention to her.

She had made the recording herself.  The idea seemed very out of
character for Captain Janeway, but who was I to judge how she
satisfied her urges?  The horror of it was, if she actually had made
this recording, she was presently under the assumption it was her
personal property.

Then something worse occurred to me, as if that were possible.  She
did *not* know this recording existed.  It would be a lot like my
theory that the computer was spying on her, but not quite.  I don't
mean the computer intentionally recorded her masturbating, just that
she forgot to tell it to stop recording after her personal log or
something.  The computer glitched because of it, which is how I ended
up finding it.

So what the hell did I think I was going to do?  Go in and lie to the
captain?  My theories weren't worth the gray matter I had used to
think them up if they only helped her realize  something she had done
in the privacy of her quarters was now public knowledge.  And if she
didn't know the recording existed, then-- well, I didn't even want to
think about what her response would be to *that*.

I sat on the couch for a while, contemplating.  My second option was a
goner, because I knew it wasn't any more of an option than the first
one was.  As soon as I came to understand my real theory, it stopped
being as black-and-white as "tell her" or "not tell her."

In the end, there was only one thing to do, only one thing I *could*
do and still live with myself as a person and a Starfleet officer.  In
essence, I guess it was simply an extension of "not tell her," but it
felt like a whole lot more than that.

Whatever it was, it made me proud.  Proud of the action I was about to
take, proud of the way it made me feel.  Proud that I did not watch
the recording another hundred times or tuck it away in my junk file
again.

I just destroyed it.

---

Yesterday morning, Janeway acknowledged me in the corridor.  This time
I did more than give her my usual vague nod of my head in response.
Instead, I smiled and spoke to her.  "Good morning, Captain.  How are
you today?"

She stopped, returned the smile, and fixed me with those remarkable
eyes of hers.  She touched me, too, the way she touches other crew
members, particularly her senior staff.  She reached out and
sandwiched one of my hands between hers.  I don't remember one bit
what she said to me, but I'll never forget her hands.  They were
smooth and warm.  And her eyes, her sparkling blue-gray eyes.

For that one moment, they were focused entirely on me and I didn't
feel quite so much like a nameless crew member anymore.

As a matter of fact, I still don't.

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The End