The BLTS Archive- My Chakotay
#14: Better the Devil
by MaisieRita (MaisieRita@aol.com)

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copyright 1999

Disclaimer: Paramount owns 'em. I borrow 'em from time to time.

Warning: This will make no sense if you haven't read the first
thirteen. I will accept no blame for any confusion you may suffer if
you read this segment without having read the others first.

Feedback: Please! All constructive comments will be seriously
considered. Grammar nits welcome.

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"Tom."

"Chakotay." It's a struggle for him to get the name out, and yet I'm
scared shitless by the venom in his eyes. There's no hint of blue in
them right now; I wonder if there's any of Tom Paris left in there at
all.

Then I take a look at the bodies scattered around the floor. Two or
three of them are obviously dead, lying unnaturally still with necks
twisted at impossible angles; the rest are still alive, though
injured. All are Maquis. The 'bad' Maquis, the ones I realized too
late were only in it for the fight, not the cause. The ones who
decided, when we got stuck out here and there were no Cardassians to
beat up, that they'd beat up Tom instead.

It's small comfort to realize that the victims weren't chosen at
random, that the men lying on the floor are those against whom Tom
longed to take  his revenge. Dalby may have been a jerk, and he may
even have earned having his face smashed in, but he didn't deserve to
have his neck broken. That  the demons provided the power to do this
damage I have no doubt. That Tom gave them the direction is equally as
clear to me.

It frightens me more than anything else, the thought that Tom could be
a willing party to this death and destruction. Power corrupts, I know
that, but it still scares me to see Tom using his demon-infused
strength to exact his vengeance.

I take a step towards him and he takes an involuntary step backwards,
a fleeting expression of pain crossing his face.

My presence still hurts the demons inside him, then. I take it as a
good omen, and walk another few paces towards him. As I move towards
him, he backs up until he is touching the wall. "Don't." His voice is
low and ominous, with a faintly exotic accent that manages to emerge
even in the one syllable of the word.

"I just want to talk," I answer, as gently as possible, and reach out
to touch his arm.

It's a mistake. As soon as my fingers make contact with his sleeve,
I'm assaulted by an inhuman wailing that makes my skin crawl. Without
warning I'm thrown across the corridor, surrounded by howling black
shapes writhing in agony. The demons around me are dying, but they're
using their last seconds of existence to propel me as far away from
Tom as possible in this limited space.

I land on my back, shaken but not really injured, and risk a look at
Tom. He's nearly doubled over, his arms are wrapped around his middle,
and his eyes are filled with pain. The look he shoots at me is pure
poison.

"You hurt us," he spits out.

"I'm sorry-"

When he speaks again, the odd accent grows stronger. "Your very
presence wounds us. Your touch kills us. And yet . . ." Another
howling black tornado surrounds me and I'm lifted a meter into the air
before being dropped unceremoniously on my ass. " . . . you are no
longer immune to our power." Tom sets his jaw and advances on me, a
momentary flicker of discomfort the only outward evidence of the pain
I'm sure he's feeling. "Many of us will die before we kill you." He
frowns grimly. "It will be well worth it."

For an instant, I panic. I won't ever be strong enough to fight them
here. The demons have gained too much power in the physical world
through their union with Tom, and they protect his body from all
attacks. All of our security guards with their phaser compression
rifles, all our forcefields, all our medicines . . . they're all
useless against him now. Short of throwing him out the airlock, I
don't see any way to harm or contain him.

He's at no such disadvantage. If there was a time -- and there *was*
such a time, not that long ago, in fact -- when the demons couldn't
harm me, that time has passed. Whatever reluctance Tom may once have
had to hurt me, whatever belief he held that I was somehow immune to
demons' attacks, it's gone. Simply  the fact that he is willing now to
challenge me directly is proof enough.

And somehow I can't shake the feeling that if I die, the last thread
of Tom's resistance to the demons inside him dies too.

I have to fight them, but I can't fight them here.

Here in the physical world the battle is too uneven. They have too
much power to harm and destroy, and they are armored against our
weapons more effectively than the Borg. Here all I have for protection
is Tom's quickly fading belief that I can stand against these spirits.
I need to meet the demons on an equal playing field, somewhere where
it is *my* belief that shields me, not Tom's.

And so in the midst of all this carnage, I close my eyes and clear my
thoughts. With no akoonah to guide me, I have to find my own way to
the clearing of my spirit guide. It's a difficult journey, something
I've never attempted before. My father warned me against it, said that
without a tangible reminder of the physical world to lead me back, I'd
be liable to get lost in the spirit plane forever.

So be it.

It's scary, all the more so because I know that if I fail to find the
clearing and confront the demons there, they'll likely figure out a
way to kill my body back in the physical world. I have no great wish
to die, especially while my soul is on a spirit walk.

When I open my eyes, I'm in the middle of a forest. It's more or less
familiar; several of my past meditative journeys have led me away from
the clearing and in among the trees. But on those trips, there was
always a sure path back to the clearing. Now I'm confronted with a
multitude of paths, each
leading in a different direction.

I don't have the foggiest idea which path is the correct one. All I
know is that I surely don't have time to try them all. As time passes
here, so it passes in the physical world. Panic fills me. I don't know
what to do. I'm frozen, paralyzed, lost . . .

"You are not lost, Chakotay."

I look up into the inscrutable eyes of my Guide, twisted around a
branch above me, gazing down at me.

"Help me," I plead. "I need to find the clearing."

"You must find it yourself," he says, calmly.

"I can't! I don't know which way to go . . . "

He frowns at me as if I am an uneducated child. "There is only one
path to the clearing."

Even more quickly than usual, I begin to lose patience with my Guide.
"Do you know which one it is?"

He's still frowning. "There is only one path to the clearing."

Now he's being uncooperative *and* obtuse. I swallow my anger. "I
understand that. But there are all these other trails here and-"

"There is only one path to the clearing."

I want to wrap my hands around his skinny reptilian neck. "I *know*
that. But I still have to find that path. These other paths were never
here before-"

"You're right. They were never here before. There is only one path to
the clearing."

I count very slowly to ten and consider the  possibility that he's
actually, in his own irritating way, trying to help me. There is only
one path to the
clearing. He's established that. But these other paths -- hundreds of
them -- are here now. They were never here before.

So . . . how did they get here?

"You're getting warmer," my Guide says lazily, flicking his forked
tongue at a non-existent fly.

I ignore him. I certainly didn't put all these extra paths in here,
and I'm willing to bet my Guide didn't. Which would mean . . . "The
demons put them here to confuse me."

"There is only one path to the clearing."

"So you've said." One path to the clearing. All the others are false.
But how can I know which is the right one? Unless . . . unless *none*
of them is. I've never needed to physically choose a path before. When
I meditated with the akoonah, I'd always simply closed my eyes and
concentrated and . . .

. . . I open my eyes to find myself in the grassy place, my Guide
sitting placidly on a rock admiring the way his scales shine in the
sunlight. "Took you long enough to get here."

"You could have just *told* me," I snap back, irritated at the
needless waste of time.

"I could not have told you," he says simply. "You should know that by
now."

I swallow an angry retort and attempt to calm myself. The demons are
trying to keep me off balance -- are possibly even heightening my
aggressiveness -- and they're succeeding. The longer they keep me
here, out of control, the longer they have to kill me back in the
physical world.

The thought strengthens my resolve and I turn to my Guide. "I'm
ready."

"Good for you."

I bite back a snide remark and look around at the grassy clearing. My
Guide and I are alone. "How do I get the demons here?"

"They're already here, Chakotay. You brought them with you."

I look around reflexively but see no one other than my Guide. "I don't
see them."

He laughs dryly. "Then you're not looking hard enough."

For an instant I allow myself the luxury of hating him, then I close
my eyes and concentrate on seeing beyond the expected. When I open my
eyes again, the demons are everywhere, covering the clearing and
extending to the forest beyond, even blotting out the sun.

Damn, there are so *many* of them. How can I ever hope to defeat them
all?

"Remember," a woman's soft voice breathes in my ear, with just the
faintest touch of a French accent, "this is Tom's battle. You can only
help him fight it."

Tom. God, in the midst of all of this, I've forgotten about Tom. I
look for him and see him in the midst of the shadows, sitting on a log
methodically plucking piece after piece of grass from the ground.

To reach him I have to walk right into the swarming mass of demons.
They swirl around me, hissing threats, but I have regained my
equilibrium and my confidence. This is *my* battlefield, and they
can't hurt me here unless I allow it.

"Tom?"

He nods mutely and continues plucking the grass from the ground.

"Tom, look at me."

He lifts his head briefly and I'm heartened to see that here, at
least, his eyes are the brilliant blue I'm used to. "So," he says
listlessly, "this is where you come when you meditate? Kind of
crowded, isn't it?"

"Not usually."

He grins wanly. "Yeah, I guess that's my fault. Sorry. I don't go
anywhere alone any more."

"I've noticed."

He plucks another long stem of grass from the ground. "Chakotay, why
did you bring us here? They're going to kill you back there, you know.
I won't be able to stop them this time. They're too strong."

"They're strong," I concede. "But you're stronger. Tom, you have to
fight them."

He waves his arm around angrily. "How can I fight them? Chakotay,
there are a *million* of them, and only one of me. Even I'm not crazy
enough to take on those odds."

"It's not about odds. If you don't fight them, they'll keep killing
innocent people."

Instantly, his expression shifts from defensive to hostile. "Innocent?
Chakotay, those fuckers came after me for *months*. They deserved it-"

"They deserved to die?"

"They deserved to be punished." His voice is low, but insistent.

"Punished, yes, but not by death. You don't believe that, Tom. I know
you don't."

He's angry, unaccountably. "You don't know what I believe. You don't
know me at all, Chakotay. Stop pretending you do."

"How can you say that after all we've shared?"

"All we've shared is blow jobs. Don't glorify it into something it's
not."

It's obvious that this isn't working. He's getting more agitated and
the demons are getting restless. Excited, even. I'm wasting time I
can't afford, so I switch gears. "Why didn't you kill B'Elanna?"

He looks at me like I'm insane. "Why would I kill B'Elanna?"

"You attacked her."

His eyes lose focus for an instant, then he shakes his head. "That
wasn't me. *They* attacked her."

"Why?"

"She . . . was saying things . . . confusing us. . . "

I ignore the ominous 'us'. "And so they attacked her to shut her up.
Why didn't they just kill her?"

"I don't know."

"Did you want them to kill her?"

"No!"

"Because you love her."

It's a bare whisper. "Yes."

I try to lead him to it. "So you didn't let them kill her."

His head snaps up sharply. "What?"

"The demons didn't kill B'Elanna because they *couldn't*. You wouldn't
let them. Don't you get it? You don't get your power from the demons.
*They* get their power from *you*."

The mass of shadows swirling around me starts to buzz in agitation,
but if Tom notices, he gives no sign of it. "You're crazy. They've
been around for thousands of years. They don't need me."

"Of course they do. They had no power here until you let them out."

We're interrupted by a harsh growl. "Kill him." The voice is low and
ominous and comes from nowhere in particular. Tom looks off to the
side and then back to me, a disturbed expression on his face.

It's little comfort to me that I'm obviously on the right track when I
see a phaser suddenly appear in Tom's hand. I speak again, cursing the
obvious tremor in my voice. "They know I'm right, Tom."

"Kill him." The disembodied voice is more insistent. "Kill him now. Be
done with this."

I speak hurriedly. "They want you to kill me because they can't do it
themselves. You won't let them."

"No," he says faintly, "you're protected from them-"

"Only because *you* believe it."

"*Kill* him!" It's not just one voice, now; it's many voices, speaking
in unison. I'm suddenly reminded again of the Borg, and I feel as if
I'm trying to defeat the entire Collective. A demons' Collective, with
Tom in the place of the Borg Queen. It's a poor analogy, because
without their Queen, the Borg can still function, their power
effectively undiminished. They simply lack direction. The demons, on
the other hand . . .

Without Tom, they're nothing. It hits me suddenly, with the strength
of sheer certainty. Before the demons merged with Tom their powers in
the physical world were insubstantial, limited to weak possessions of
men who probably could have resisted the possessions if they'd known
to try. It was Tom who gave the demons entry to the physical world. It
is their union with him that gives them their strength.

"They're weak without you, Tom," I say, trying to ignore the black
clouds swirling chaotically around us. " *You* give the power to them,
not the other way around! You have to cast them out. The same way you
invited them in, you have to make them leave-"

"Kill him! Kill him!" A hundred, a thousand, a million voices are all
speaking at once, urging Tom towards violence, pressuring him to raise
the phaser. "He's trying to confuse us, deceive us. He's trying to
take away the power we share! Once he is dead, no one will be able to
harm us. *Kill* him!"

I try to shout over the thunderous noise. "They're lying-"

"Kill him!"

"Shut up!" Tom shouts angrily, and I'd be happier about it if only I
could be sure who he's shouting at.

The cloud of demons swarms in agitation. "Kill him now. Do it, and we
will be invincible."

"If you let them win, they will keep killing!" I'm screaming now,
shouting at the top of my lungs over the roar of the demons'
collective voice. "They won't stop with the ones who hurt you. They'll
hurt Kathryn, B'Elanna . . . those you love, those you care for . . .
they'll all be victims. *Your* victims."

For one dreadful instant, I'm terrified that I've miscalculated. A
deep thirst for blood crosses Tom's face and I'm afraid that the
demons have warped him beyond all hope of salvation. I can only
imagine how seductive it must be for someone who was so vulnerable to
have in his grasp the ability to control the very lives of those
around him with just a thought. But then the instant passes and fear
replaces the bloodlust. "I don't want to hurt anyone else,"
he says softly. "I never wanted to hurt anyone."

"*Liar*!" The demons are howling, swirling around him by the hundreds
and screaming in his face. He flinches back but there's no way to
escape them. Their collective voice turns hostile and accusatory. "You
love it, love the power, love their *pain*."

He's pale and trying to back away. "No."

The demons are terrifying in their intensity. "You can't deny it. We
share your thoughts, your feelings. You wanted those men to hurt."

Tom's eyes are wide, but he doesn't deny the charge.

The demons continue, victoriously. "You can't deny your destiny. You
are the One for whom we have waited, and our power is now eternally
yours . . . "

I finally find my voice again. "It's a trick, Tom, a trap. They're
seducing you, making you forget who you are-"

"Shut *up*!" This time, he's definitely talking to me.

The demons are frantic. "*Kill* him! Let him be the first to die! Kill
him and our power is yours forever!"

Wild-eyed, Tom turns to me with the phaser in his hand, and I realize
that though the demons can't hurt me here, I'm frighteningly
vulnerable to Tom. His eyes are glassy, and he raises the phaser to
chest level, whispering, "I'm sorry, Chakotay." I wonder faintly
what's going to happen to my body in the physical world after I'm shot
here on the spirit plane. Then I start to pray as Tom's hand tightens
around the phaser . . .

With a sudden twist of his wrist, he shoots himself in the heart.

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The End