I've been debating posting this for a while, as a) I've not really written anything for Voyager for several years and consider myself rusty b) I don't have a beta reader, with all that entails and c) it's a WiP. But I think that if I don't post it somewhere, it'll just languish on my drive, like a lot of my other fics, and never end up being completed.
This began as an attempt to fill in some of what happened to the Doctor during the three years he spent dirtside in the sixth season episode Blink of an Eye. Somewhere along the line it also became an attempt to reconcile this episode with Virtuoso, and his behaviour in season seven. I have to admit that it ended up being rather more angsty than I intended.
Any and all feedback is appreciated, including pointing out mistakes.
========
MEMENTO
=========
It was with considerable trepidation that the Doctor opened the short data packet addressed to him. Alternately terrified and desperate to know what it contained, he’d waited until Voyager was a full day clear of the planet to inspect it, on tenterhooks the entire time. Ultimately, he was glad he had. He wasn't sure what he would have done were the planet still in transporter range. Beamed back down, or something else entirely irrational.
They were all dead.
He had known, intellectually, from the moment he’d felt the transporter beam’s pull, that he would never see any of them again, but the sparse, simple lines of text in the private transmission somehow made it real in a way he would never have thought possible.
They were all dead. Everyone he had ever known or come to care about over the past three years, dead, and for centuries. Descendents too.
The grief was... overwhelming. More than unpleasant, it was actually painful. And, as he forced himself to read on, a dark undercurrent of jealousy emerged, making the grief all the worse.
Jason eventually had another father; Mareeza, another lover.
He’d never know when, or how, or really anything more than a name, an occupation and a date of death, but someone else had stepped in to fill the space that had been his for two and a half years. Someone else had taken Jason to his first Mountain game, taught him to read and write, been there for marriages, births and deaths... Someone else had spent long nights listening to Mareeza play, reminded her to eat when she got too wrapped up in her work, smirked at snide remarks at gala openings, shared secrets and even a bed on occasion...
=====
He felt her stir long before she actually came awake. Hundreds of finely-tuned receptors detected an uptick in skin temperature and heartbeat, along with a dozen other tiny signals that indicated an impending return to full consciousness - or as near to it as one could be expected to manage in the small hours of the morning.
She inhaled sharply, eyes fluttering open, and half-turned to face him.
"What time is it?" she asked muzzily.
"Early. About three marks. You should go back to sleep."
"Mmm," she agreed. Her expression turned quizzical as more neurons fired.
"You're still here? I thought you Sky-Ship people didn't sleep."
"This particular Sky-Ship person does not, no," he allowed, brushing an errant lock of hair out of her face.
She caught his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Inwardly he thrilled at the casual intimacy, all but unthinkable just a week ago. It never ceased to amaze him just how much could be communicated by a simple touch, and the ways in which his program had adapted to account for - and enjoy - the phenomenon.
"Then why -"
"It's peaceful." It was, oddly enough. Stuck, he'd initially resigned himself to being bored for the rest of the night, but, with little to focus on save the darkness, her sleeping biorhythms and the occasional rumble of a vehicle passing on the street below, his program had actually started to idle. He wouldn't describe it as sleep, certainly, but it felt a lot like he'd thought mediation might be like. A first. "That and you fell asleep on my arm. I didn't want to wake you."
"I did?" She let go of his hand and sat up enough to allow him to extract the limb in question. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Go back to sleep."
"But-"
"Sleep," he insisted.
"Mmm..." She relaxed and her eyes slid shut, but only for a moment. "You don't have to stay, you know."
"Would you prefer if I didn't?" It was his turn to sit up. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve had... company. I don’t want to disturb you.”
"I didn't say that." She placed a restraining hand on his chest. Again, the thrill. Outside of work, physical contact had always been a rarity in his life, and here avoiding it was all but a necessity. To have someone that he could trust, someone who trusted him in turn and sought out such contact, that was something to treasure. “It’s nice having you here. I just don’t want you to get bored. It can’t be very interesting watching me sleep.”
“As I said, it’s peaceful.”
He lowered himself back down to the bed once more. On sudden impulse he reached out and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist, instead arranging herself so that her head was resting on his shoulder, hand across his chest. He ran fingers through her hair and smiled into the darkness.
Stranded on a backwards planet, living in constant fear of being exposed as the technological marvel he was, he’d never expected to find anything approaching happiness. And yet, here it was.
=====
He dropped the padd and rose to his feet, rapidly pacing the confines of his office. The feelings were too strong to be contained, but he had no outlet other than motion. He'd never had a physical mechanism for release, and the passage of three years had made near strangers of the few shipmates he might once have felt comfortable confiding in.
The cruellest cut of all, though, was the realisation he was not mentioned anywhere in the brief account. Gotana-Retz had apparently done some digging, but had found virtually nothing. He'd faded out of their lives, out of history, leaving no trace of his presence, just like a good Starfleet officer. Mareeza had moved on, taken his secret with her to the grave, and Jason had probably grown up having no memories of him at all.
=====
The Doctor sat in his accustomed position at the briefing table and tried to summon an appropriate level of interest in proceedings. A routine meeting today, mainly departmental status updates. The motions and rhythms of ship life were quickly coming back to him; soon it would be as if he’d never left.
Almost, anyway.
He abruptly became aware that silence had descended at the table. Everyone was looking at him.
“Doctor?” the Captain repeated.
He quickly replayed his logs of the last few minutes. Being a hologram meant that you never got caught out not paying attention, even when you hadn't been for, oh, say, the last half hour. Ah, it was his turn to give an update.
“I have nothing new to report regarding crew health from this time last... week.” The pause, microseconds in length, was probably not noticeable to anyone but Seven, and perhaps Tuvok. It had ultimately taken him half an hour of dedicated processing time to resolve the date conflicts between his program and the main computer, finally allowing him to transfer back off the mobile emitter. It had been good to come 'home' in that respect, the familiar support systems and custom-built hardware fitting like a beloved and much-worn pair of shoes. He'd been surprised to discover that, on some level, he'd actually missed being part of the ship.
“However, it has come to my attention that some items in the emergency medkits on decks four through seven may be approaching their expiration date. I’d like to begin evaluating and restocking them this week. Among other things, this will involve a significant amount of replication of some quite complex molecules.”
Janeway nodded her approval. “B’Elanna, Chakotay, factor that in to this week’s ration allocation.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, and allowed the conversation to pass to the next speaker. It was actually another six months before he really needed to take action on the medkits, but, as the Humans liked to say, there was no time like the present.
Well, no, that wasn't it at all. He needed something to do that would keep him busy and preferably also out of Sickbay for a while so he could better avoid unwelcome dialogue with the irritatingly curious. Given an external problem to focus on, he'd found that his programming stopped constantly dredging up memories of his former life for re-examination. He was secretly amazed by the number of ways he’d found to occupy his time over the past several days. Sickbay had never been cleaner, nor crew records better annotated.
The meeting wrapped not long after, and the Doctor found himself drawn off to one side by B’Elanna before he could make good his escape.
“I’ll need a revised estimate of Sickbay power usage for the next week,” she began.
“That goes without saying,” he agreed.
She stopped and tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms.
“You know, Doctor, I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before to come to me about any special power needs first. There are other people on this ship and other projects that need power,” she said, more than a hint of annoyance and exasperation in her voice.
He was struck by a powerful wave of what he could only call déjà vu. Mareeza was only four point four two centimetres taller than the half-Klingon and someti- had sometimes used that exact tone with him, that same posture, radiating irritation, particularly after he’d done something she considered to be needlessly extravagant and/or infuriating. Of course, her voice typically had a great deal more good humour and, may it be said, melody in it than evidenced by the half-Klingon...
=====
He looked around at the apartment in bewilderment. Spotless. A place for everything and everything in its place, either alphabetised or stacked neatly or scrubbed and polished until it shone. He was certain the dwelling had never looked this good, even when new.
Looking back at his new, well, cohabitant? housemate was the word, he supposed, he discovered both her posture and expression unchanged.
“Have I done something wrong?” he hazarded.
“You cleaned!” she exclaimed, as though this were some sort of crime against nature, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Well, you did ask me to tidy up a bit,” he protested. “That was the agreement. I do what you ask around the house and help out when the baby is born, you help provide me with a cover story." There was also the matter of free concert tickets, but that probably really bear mentioning at this juncture. "You asked, I did.” As far as he was concerned, that should really have been the end of it.
“I said a bit! And I certainly didn’t ask you to clean my workroom.” She gestured towards her desk, now spotless, and sighed almost mournfully. “I had a system. Some of those piles were like old friends.”
If there had been a system to the towering stacks of music and assorted paperwork that had previously covered the majority of her workspace, he’d been unable to find it, and he was very good at spotting patterns.
However, if the predictions his personal interaction subroutines were making were correct, it was probably not in his best interests to point this out. He was keenly aware that the cover story he was trying to maintain while he awaited rescue was highly dependent upon her goodwill and gratitude, and he certainly couldn't afford to be thrown out so soon, and over something so minor. With that in mind, he elected instead to try an unaccustomed and largely untested approach, one he'd really only seen being put into operation.
“I’m sorry," he apologised, with a sincerity that wasn't entirely false. "You didn’t specify exactly what you wanted done. I presumed you meant the entire apartment.”
“I didn’t. But I also didn’t ‘specify’. I just thought...” She looked around once more and shook her head in apparent amazement. “I’ve got to admit, I’ve had professional cleaners who didn’t do as a good a job.”
He found himself smiling, pleased both by the compliment and that this new tactic had worked, quickly defusing what could have been a difficult situation.
“I like cleanliness and order. It’s... inbuilt.”
She gave him what he could only call an odd look but otherwise let the remark slide. Another of the conditions of their new arrangement was that she wouldn’t ask questions that he couldn’t answer.
“Well, what’s done is done," she said after a moment. "I suppose in a couple of months it’ll be back the way it used to be.”
“Perhaps a couple of months is not necessary,” he suggested as the thought occurred to him. He reached for the folder now labelled Protector Vortane II.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting things back as I found them. Well, most of it anyway," he amended, recalling unexpected biohazards buried beneath various piles. "I'm afraid I washed all the cutlery I found.” And thrown out the plates and candy wrappers.
She watched silently as he extracted four pages of notes on the compositions of Chohara Mortanz and arranged them carefully on the desk, followed by a yellowing ticket stub and concert program pulled out of the waste receptacle.
“You can do that?”
“I’m a man of many talents," he answered cheerfully. "My memory, in particular, is... exceptional.”
======
“... What?”
He came back to the present, aware that he’d been staring at -or rather, through- B’Elanna while she’d continued speaking. He hadn’t consciously registered any of her words while the memory had replayed itself.
“Nothing,” he said, once again going through the audio logs. “Lieutenant, you’re right - I should have come to you first. If it’s going to be particularly disruptive, I can put it off until next week, or the week after if you’d prefer.”
He liked to think he’d learnt a thing or two about placating women - irate, exasperated or otherwise - over the last couple of years. A partial capitulation and/or admission of fault had often proved a useful negotiating tactic, if one that occasionally backfired horrendously. It appeared to have worked here, though it probably helped that the engineer was not accustomed to such a quick surrender on his part. Were he the same hologram now as the day he left, he probably would have insisted on holding to his own timetable, everyone else be dammed.
“What if you do half this week and half next week,” she offered. Her expression now suggested a mixture of suspicion and mild surprise.
The Doctor gave this offer due consideration. It was certainly better than putting it off entirely until next week, and he could, he supposed, find other ways to occupy his time. What they would be, he wasn’t certain, but something would probably present itself. There were always experiments to run and research to be done.
“Agreed. I’ll have the estimate on your desk this afternoon.”
B’Elanna nodded her own agreement and began to turn away, when another thought struck him. Unless he reminded them, it really was as if, to most of the Voyager crew, he'd just had a particularly interesting shore-leave and hadn't been gone for any real length of time at all. The passage of three years had left no mark on him.
Well, not outwardly, anyway.
“Lieutenant -“
She turned back, expression bearing more than a hint of her former exasperation.
“Doctor?”
“I’d like to arrange for you to give me a thorough 'checkup' sometime in the near future.” He held up a hand to forestall her protest - since the demise of the purpose-built diagnostic tool, all of his maintenance work had to be done manually and was increasingly time-consuming. “I know you did one last week, but that was over three years ago from my perspective.”
“Point taken.” She conceded, and checked her padd. “Tomorrow... no, the day after at... 15:00? I can give you three hours. That should be just enough.”
“15:00 would be ideal,” he agreed, checking against his own schedule. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
He made to follow her out, but found himself stopped once again.
“Doctor. Can I have a minute?”
It was, to his mild surprise, Commander Chakotay, still seated at the briefing table. Typically, barring illness or injury, he and the Commander had little to do with each other. They had different social circles, for want of a better term, and, while crew welfare and discipline were traditionally be the domain of the First Officer, the Captain had taken it upon herself to manage the Doctor's unique situation personally.
“Of course, Commander. What can I do for you?” he said, turning back.
Chakotay motioned for him to take up the seat opposite. The Doctor obliged, somewhat warily.
“I wanted to talk to you about your time on Kelmari.”
Already weighing heavily on his mind from his conversation with B'Elanna, the very mention of the name was like a renewed kick to the gut, dragging up hundreds of memory files, each clamouring for his attention. He tried to keep his expression amicably neutral, and took up the indicated seat.
“I’ve begun writing up my report, Commander," a small lie - his attempts thus far had been disjointed at best and painful at worst, and were what had led him to seek solace in other work, “but I don’t imagine it will be done for some time. There’s... quite a lot to cover.”
“I'm sure your report will be very thorough, Doctor," Chakotay said, holding up his hand, “but that’s not quite what I’m interested in. Voyager had the unique opportunity to watch the evolution of an entire race from stone-age to space-faring. From an anthropological perspective, it’s unparalleled. I’d like to write a paper on it. Maybe several.” The Commander’s normally taciturn expression was replaced by one of unbridled enthusiasm. “We’ve got thousands of scans of the planet’s development, and we even managed to capture some audio and visual broadcasts, but what we don’t have - yet - is an accurate idea of how their society operated, how the people actually lived their day-to-day lives, or the full impact Voyager’s presence had on their culture. We have bits and pieces, but no overall picture.”
“Which is where I come in,” the Doctor said, more slowly than he’d intended. He did not like where this was heading.
Chakotay nodded. “You had the opportunity to experience it all, first hand, for three years. You lived in a major cultural district," he paused, eyebrows raised slightly. "The Captain said that you’d even mentioned living with a member of the species for a while.”
The Doctor had regretted mentioning Mareeza the moment her name had been vocalised. He'd just been so happy to be back in one piece, and to see old friends again after so long, it had all just come tumbling out.
It would be nice if he could recapture that feeling again.
"I did,” he allowed, discomfort rising. Lived with, loved, and now lost. “I’m happy to assist you in any way I can.”
Now that was a blatant lie, one he hoped the Commander would not be able to pick up on. Lying was something he'd been forced to become very good at during his stay planetside. 'Why don't you ever have lunch with us? What's with that thing on your arm? You just keep going and going - what's you secret?'
"Excellent. I'll prepare a list of questions. Shall we say... Friday at 19.00? I'll come by Sickbay."
"Agreed."
--------------
This began as an attempt to fill in some of what happened to the Doctor during the three years he spent dirtside in the sixth season episode Blink of an Eye. Somewhere along the line it also became an attempt to reconcile this episode with Virtuoso, and his behaviour in season seven. I have to admit that it ended up being rather more angsty than I intended.
Any and all feedback is appreciated, including pointing out mistakes.
========
MEMENTO
=========
It was with considerable trepidation that the Doctor opened the short data packet addressed to him. Alternately terrified and desperate to know what it contained, he’d waited until Voyager was a full day clear of the planet to inspect it, on tenterhooks the entire time. Ultimately, he was glad he had. He wasn't sure what he would have done were the planet still in transporter range. Beamed back down, or something else entirely irrational.
They were all dead.
He had known, intellectually, from the moment he’d felt the transporter beam’s pull, that he would never see any of them again, but the sparse, simple lines of text in the private transmission somehow made it real in a way he would never have thought possible.
They were all dead. Everyone he had ever known or come to care about over the past three years, dead, and for centuries. Descendents too.
The grief was... overwhelming. More than unpleasant, it was actually painful. And, as he forced himself to read on, a dark undercurrent of jealousy emerged, making the grief all the worse.
Jason eventually had another father; Mareeza, another lover.
He’d never know when, or how, or really anything more than a name, an occupation and a date of death, but someone else had stepped in to fill the space that had been his for two and a half years. Someone else had taken Jason to his first Mountain game, taught him to read and write, been there for marriages, births and deaths... Someone else had spent long nights listening to Mareeza play, reminded her to eat when she got too wrapped up in her work, smirked at snide remarks at gala openings, shared secrets and even a bed on occasion...
=====
He felt her stir long before she actually came awake. Hundreds of finely-tuned receptors detected an uptick in skin temperature and heartbeat, along with a dozen other tiny signals that indicated an impending return to full consciousness - or as near to it as one could be expected to manage in the small hours of the morning.
She inhaled sharply, eyes fluttering open, and half-turned to face him.
"What time is it?" she asked muzzily.
"Early. About three marks. You should go back to sleep."
"Mmm," she agreed. Her expression turned quizzical as more neurons fired.
"You're still here? I thought you Sky-Ship people didn't sleep."
"This particular Sky-Ship person does not, no," he allowed, brushing an errant lock of hair out of her face.
She caught his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Inwardly he thrilled at the casual intimacy, all but unthinkable just a week ago. It never ceased to amaze him just how much could be communicated by a simple touch, and the ways in which his program had adapted to account for - and enjoy - the phenomenon.
"Then why -"
"It's peaceful." It was, oddly enough. Stuck, he'd initially resigned himself to being bored for the rest of the night, but, with little to focus on save the darkness, her sleeping biorhythms and the occasional rumble of a vehicle passing on the street below, his program had actually started to idle. He wouldn't describe it as sleep, certainly, but it felt a lot like he'd thought mediation might be like. A first. "That and you fell asleep on my arm. I didn't want to wake you."
"I did?" She let go of his hand and sat up enough to allow him to extract the limb in question. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Go back to sleep."
"But-"
"Sleep," he insisted.
"Mmm..." She relaxed and her eyes slid shut, but only for a moment. "You don't have to stay, you know."
"Would you prefer if I didn't?" It was his turn to sit up. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve had... company. I don’t want to disturb you.”
"I didn't say that." She placed a restraining hand on his chest. Again, the thrill. Outside of work, physical contact had always been a rarity in his life, and here avoiding it was all but a necessity. To have someone that he could trust, someone who trusted him in turn and sought out such contact, that was something to treasure. “It’s nice having you here. I just don’t want you to get bored. It can’t be very interesting watching me sleep.”
“As I said, it’s peaceful.”
He lowered himself back down to the bed once more. On sudden impulse he reached out and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist, instead arranging herself so that her head was resting on his shoulder, hand across his chest. He ran fingers through her hair and smiled into the darkness.
Stranded on a backwards planet, living in constant fear of being exposed as the technological marvel he was, he’d never expected to find anything approaching happiness. And yet, here it was.
=====
He dropped the padd and rose to his feet, rapidly pacing the confines of his office. The feelings were too strong to be contained, but he had no outlet other than motion. He'd never had a physical mechanism for release, and the passage of three years had made near strangers of the few shipmates he might once have felt comfortable confiding in.
The cruellest cut of all, though, was the realisation he was not mentioned anywhere in the brief account. Gotana-Retz had apparently done some digging, but had found virtually nothing. He'd faded out of their lives, out of history, leaving no trace of his presence, just like a good Starfleet officer. Mareeza had moved on, taken his secret with her to the grave, and Jason had probably grown up having no memories of him at all.
=====
The Doctor sat in his accustomed position at the briefing table and tried to summon an appropriate level of interest in proceedings. A routine meeting today, mainly departmental status updates. The motions and rhythms of ship life were quickly coming back to him; soon it would be as if he’d never left.
Almost, anyway.
He abruptly became aware that silence had descended at the table. Everyone was looking at him.
“Doctor?” the Captain repeated.
He quickly replayed his logs of the last few minutes. Being a hologram meant that you never got caught out not paying attention, even when you hadn't been for, oh, say, the last half hour. Ah, it was his turn to give an update.
“I have nothing new to report regarding crew health from this time last... week.” The pause, microseconds in length, was probably not noticeable to anyone but Seven, and perhaps Tuvok. It had ultimately taken him half an hour of dedicated processing time to resolve the date conflicts between his program and the main computer, finally allowing him to transfer back off the mobile emitter. It had been good to come 'home' in that respect, the familiar support systems and custom-built hardware fitting like a beloved and much-worn pair of shoes. He'd been surprised to discover that, on some level, he'd actually missed being part of the ship.
“However, it has come to my attention that some items in the emergency medkits on decks four through seven may be approaching their expiration date. I’d like to begin evaluating and restocking them this week. Among other things, this will involve a significant amount of replication of some quite complex molecules.”
Janeway nodded her approval. “B’Elanna, Chakotay, factor that in to this week’s ration allocation.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, and allowed the conversation to pass to the next speaker. It was actually another six months before he really needed to take action on the medkits, but, as the Humans liked to say, there was no time like the present.
Well, no, that wasn't it at all. He needed something to do that would keep him busy and preferably also out of Sickbay for a while so he could better avoid unwelcome dialogue with the irritatingly curious. Given an external problem to focus on, he'd found that his programming stopped constantly dredging up memories of his former life for re-examination. He was secretly amazed by the number of ways he’d found to occupy his time over the past several days. Sickbay had never been cleaner, nor crew records better annotated.
The meeting wrapped not long after, and the Doctor found himself drawn off to one side by B’Elanna before he could make good his escape.
“I’ll need a revised estimate of Sickbay power usage for the next week,” she began.
“That goes without saying,” he agreed.
She stopped and tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms.
“You know, Doctor, I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before to come to me about any special power needs first. There are other people on this ship and other projects that need power,” she said, more than a hint of annoyance and exasperation in her voice.
He was struck by a powerful wave of what he could only call déjà vu. Mareeza was only four point four two centimetres taller than the half-Klingon and someti- had sometimes used that exact tone with him, that same posture, radiating irritation, particularly after he’d done something she considered to be needlessly extravagant and/or infuriating. Of course, her voice typically had a great deal more good humour and, may it be said, melody in it than evidenced by the half-Klingon...
=====
He looked around at the apartment in bewilderment. Spotless. A place for everything and everything in its place, either alphabetised or stacked neatly or scrubbed and polished until it shone. He was certain the dwelling had never looked this good, even when new.
Looking back at his new, well, cohabitant? housemate was the word, he supposed, he discovered both her posture and expression unchanged.
“Have I done something wrong?” he hazarded.
“You cleaned!” she exclaimed, as though this were some sort of crime against nature, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Well, you did ask me to tidy up a bit,” he protested. “That was the agreement. I do what you ask around the house and help out when the baby is born, you help provide me with a cover story." There was also the matter of free concert tickets, but that probably really bear mentioning at this juncture. "You asked, I did.” As far as he was concerned, that should really have been the end of it.
“I said a bit! And I certainly didn’t ask you to clean my workroom.” She gestured towards her desk, now spotless, and sighed almost mournfully. “I had a system. Some of those piles were like old friends.”
If there had been a system to the towering stacks of music and assorted paperwork that had previously covered the majority of her workspace, he’d been unable to find it, and he was very good at spotting patterns.
However, if the predictions his personal interaction subroutines were making were correct, it was probably not in his best interests to point this out. He was keenly aware that the cover story he was trying to maintain while he awaited rescue was highly dependent upon her goodwill and gratitude, and he certainly couldn't afford to be thrown out so soon, and over something so minor. With that in mind, he elected instead to try an unaccustomed and largely untested approach, one he'd really only seen being put into operation.
“I’m sorry," he apologised, with a sincerity that wasn't entirely false. "You didn’t specify exactly what you wanted done. I presumed you meant the entire apartment.”
“I didn’t. But I also didn’t ‘specify’. I just thought...” She looked around once more and shook her head in apparent amazement. “I’ve got to admit, I’ve had professional cleaners who didn’t do as a good a job.”
He found himself smiling, pleased both by the compliment and that this new tactic had worked, quickly defusing what could have been a difficult situation.
“I like cleanliness and order. It’s... inbuilt.”
She gave him what he could only call an odd look but otherwise let the remark slide. Another of the conditions of their new arrangement was that she wouldn’t ask questions that he couldn’t answer.
“Well, what’s done is done," she said after a moment. "I suppose in a couple of months it’ll be back the way it used to be.”
“Perhaps a couple of months is not necessary,” he suggested as the thought occurred to him. He reached for the folder now labelled Protector Vortane II.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting things back as I found them. Well, most of it anyway," he amended, recalling unexpected biohazards buried beneath various piles. "I'm afraid I washed all the cutlery I found.” And thrown out the plates and candy wrappers.
She watched silently as he extracted four pages of notes on the compositions of Chohara Mortanz and arranged them carefully on the desk, followed by a yellowing ticket stub and concert program pulled out of the waste receptacle.
“You can do that?”
“I’m a man of many talents," he answered cheerfully. "My memory, in particular, is... exceptional.”
======
“... What?”
He came back to the present, aware that he’d been staring at -or rather, through- B’Elanna while she’d continued speaking. He hadn’t consciously registered any of her words while the memory had replayed itself.
“Nothing,” he said, once again going through the audio logs. “Lieutenant, you’re right - I should have come to you first. If it’s going to be particularly disruptive, I can put it off until next week, or the week after if you’d prefer.”
He liked to think he’d learnt a thing or two about placating women - irate, exasperated or otherwise - over the last couple of years. A partial capitulation and/or admission of fault had often proved a useful negotiating tactic, if one that occasionally backfired horrendously. It appeared to have worked here, though it probably helped that the engineer was not accustomed to such a quick surrender on his part. Were he the same hologram now as the day he left, he probably would have insisted on holding to his own timetable, everyone else be dammed.
“What if you do half this week and half next week,” she offered. Her expression now suggested a mixture of suspicion and mild surprise.
The Doctor gave this offer due consideration. It was certainly better than putting it off entirely until next week, and he could, he supposed, find other ways to occupy his time. What they would be, he wasn’t certain, but something would probably present itself. There were always experiments to run and research to be done.
“Agreed. I’ll have the estimate on your desk this afternoon.”
B’Elanna nodded her own agreement and began to turn away, when another thought struck him. Unless he reminded them, it really was as if, to most of the Voyager crew, he'd just had a particularly interesting shore-leave and hadn't been gone for any real length of time at all. The passage of three years had left no mark on him.
Well, not outwardly, anyway.
“Lieutenant -“
She turned back, expression bearing more than a hint of her former exasperation.
“Doctor?”
“I’d like to arrange for you to give me a thorough 'checkup' sometime in the near future.” He held up a hand to forestall her protest - since the demise of the purpose-built diagnostic tool, all of his maintenance work had to be done manually and was increasingly time-consuming. “I know you did one last week, but that was over three years ago from my perspective.”
“Point taken.” She conceded, and checked her padd. “Tomorrow... no, the day after at... 15:00? I can give you three hours. That should be just enough.”
“15:00 would be ideal,” he agreed, checking against his own schedule. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
He made to follow her out, but found himself stopped once again.
“Doctor. Can I have a minute?”
It was, to his mild surprise, Commander Chakotay, still seated at the briefing table. Typically, barring illness or injury, he and the Commander had little to do with each other. They had different social circles, for want of a better term, and, while crew welfare and discipline were traditionally be the domain of the First Officer, the Captain had taken it upon herself to manage the Doctor's unique situation personally.
“Of course, Commander. What can I do for you?” he said, turning back.
Chakotay motioned for him to take up the seat opposite. The Doctor obliged, somewhat warily.
“I wanted to talk to you about your time on Kelmari.”
Already weighing heavily on his mind from his conversation with B'Elanna, the very mention of the name was like a renewed kick to the gut, dragging up hundreds of memory files, each clamouring for his attention. He tried to keep his expression amicably neutral, and took up the indicated seat.
“I’ve begun writing up my report, Commander," a small lie - his attempts thus far had been disjointed at best and painful at worst, and were what had led him to seek solace in other work, “but I don’t imagine it will be done for some time. There’s... quite a lot to cover.”
“I'm sure your report will be very thorough, Doctor," Chakotay said, holding up his hand, “but that’s not quite what I’m interested in. Voyager had the unique opportunity to watch the evolution of an entire race from stone-age to space-faring. From an anthropological perspective, it’s unparalleled. I’d like to write a paper on it. Maybe several.” The Commander’s normally taciturn expression was replaced by one of unbridled enthusiasm. “We’ve got thousands of scans of the planet’s development, and we even managed to capture some audio and visual broadcasts, but what we don’t have - yet - is an accurate idea of how their society operated, how the people actually lived their day-to-day lives, or the full impact Voyager’s presence had on their culture. We have bits and pieces, but no overall picture.”
“Which is where I come in,” the Doctor said, more slowly than he’d intended. He did not like where this was heading.
Chakotay nodded. “You had the opportunity to experience it all, first hand, for three years. You lived in a major cultural district," he paused, eyebrows raised slightly. "The Captain said that you’d even mentioned living with a member of the species for a while.”
The Doctor had regretted mentioning Mareeza the moment her name had been vocalised. He'd just been so happy to be back in one piece, and to see old friends again after so long, it had all just come tumbling out.
It would be nice if he could recapture that feeling again.
"I did,” he allowed, discomfort rising. Lived with, loved, and now lost. “I’m happy to assist you in any way I can.”
Now that was a blatant lie, one he hoped the Commander would not be able to pick up on. Lying was something he'd been forced to become very good at during his stay planetside. 'Why don't you ever have lunch with us? What's with that thing on your arm? You just keep going and going - what's you secret?'
"Excellent. I'll prepare a list of questions. Shall we say... Friday at 19.00? I'll come by Sickbay."
"Agreed."
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