The BLTS Archive - Frigid
by R. Schultz (cousindream@aol.com)

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Disclaimer: Paramount owns everything.  No money made here.  Chill.
Don't sue, please.  Story mine under common-law copyright.

Written March, 2001.  No spoilers or summary.

Written for the JanewaySlash group.  May be posted later to ASCEM.
Others may archive if notice is given.

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It is so cold here, I ache to think of her frigid under that earthly
mantle.  Death, where is thy sting, death, where is thy victory?  The
snow continues to gently blow against my face.  I can pretend only
melted snow is leaking down my cheek.

I remember your kisses, your cries of passion, your hard nipples and
soft thighs.  Our arguments, our desperate stratagems to save our
ship.  The adventures.  The times we made love in the Ready
room.  In Jefferies tubes and holodecks.  The time you had your wicked
way with me --- on the floor of the second level of Engineering.  You
said the sound of other's voices down below excited you.

The snow is beginning to pile up on the ground.

"Did you know her?"

It is a caretaker, a woman, along in years.  She does not recognize
me.  She has interrupted us.  Me and my sweet darling, with two meters
of unbelievably frigid soil of earth between us.

"I asked...."

"Not nearly as well as I might have wished.  We served together on
VOYAGER."

"The ship that was lost?"

"Not lost --- just far from home."

"Well, if you ask me, you were lucky to have missed the Dominion War.
They're admitting now we lost half the fleet.  A close thing, no
doubt of it.  Scared the jeepers out of us, let me tell you.  Did  you
have to do much fighting to get back?"

"Holy ...."  I bite my tongue, I taste the copper blood.  Didn't she
read any of those lurid accounts?  I hate this puttering old fool
now.  All that suffering...  And now its history, and history fades.

"A bit," I admit.

"What was she on the ship?"

"A hero, many times over.  There is not a person on VOYAGER who did
not owe her their life.  She was a hero.  The kind of hero who
ignores her own pain to help someone else.  The kind of hero who
holds together so others can survive."

She looked funny, trying gauge me, trying to understand the passion I
had just exposed.

"I'm sure she was a noble person.  Very noble.  But why did they bury
her here, in Indiana?  Couldn't they have buried her somewhere else?"

Suspicious.  "Where else?"

"One of those Klingon planets.  And didn't the Fleet used to shoot
the dead into the local sun, encased in a whatchamacallit, photo
torpedo?"

"The Captain wished her to be buried here."

"The Captain should have left this burial grounds for the humans."

As I get older my patience seems to increase.  Or diminish.
Unpredictable.  I stared at this old fool, my eyes blinking from the
snow in it.

She must have mistaken my silence for approval.

"Our cities are so full of them, a gabble no one can understand
choking our streets, and then there's their stink.  They're not clean
if you  ask me, pushy, always demanding we give them special favors
disguised as their rights as Federation citizens.  Did you know there
was a group of Bajorans living in Muncie, now?  It's a shame, just a
shame.  Taking up space in our colleges, letting them get the good
jobs, it's all a shame, a shame."

She looks at my face.  I'm mentally enjoying dismembering this fool.

"Did you know her well?"

For the first time I think she sees more in my eyes than she wishes
was there.

"She was my wife, in fact, if not in name."  I turn back to the cold
ground where my honey-skinned girl lies.  "I guess that makes me a
lesbian.

"This used to be my home.  I thought it would be an honorable thing
to bring her home with me.  Be where I could tend her grave as I grew
old.  Be with her always."

My eyes millimeters from hers.  "But I've changed my mind.  I'll take
their offer of a desk and an Admiral's coat.  I'll find a home in San
Francisco, and a plot where I can grow marigolds or something over
her to keep her warm.

"It's too cold here, and the people don't seem very .... very much
like the Hoosiers I knew when I was growing up.  They seem to have
turned hard and frigid, like the winters.

"Maybe I'll even find some nice girl to cook my dinners and hold me
in the night.  There's a lot of lesbians in San Francisco.  And you
know what else?  There's a lot of lesbians buried at Arlington or
Velasquez on Babel, or Quang, or Chin, or Mars.

"You know why they're buried there?"  She was afraid I would hurt
her, now.

"Because they died saving your sorry ass.  They died in that damned
Dominion War that inconvenienced you and worried you."

I leave.  Knowing not even a deserved beating would be liable to put
any sense in that old woman's head.

You know, B'Elanna was right about one thing.  Anger does a wonderful
job of focusing you on what you gotta do next.  "San Francisco, here
we come," I said aloud.  "I don't go anywhere without you, kid.

. . .. And if I brought some nice girl with me one day to help me tend
your  flowers, would that be okay?"

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The End