TI: "Passer Mortuus Est." VOY (P, P/T) AU: SnoopMary (MillicentFawcett@aol.com) RA: PG (mild language warning) SE: VOY DI: Paramount owns ‚em, I‘m just foolin‘ around. SP: Everything up to and including Season 7, specifically "DRIVE", "REPRESSION". AN: Dedicated to Art and the boys of Everclear. You kick ass. SU: In the words of the immortal Edna St. Vincent Millay, "I crawl forever, hoping never to see/Above my head the limbs of my spirit no longer free/Kicking in frenzy, a swimmer enmeshed in weeds." ("Above These Cares", from _Wine From These Grapes_, 1934) ======================================================= I can hear it running through my head like a claxon the entire night. I can hear it over the sound of my own heartbeat. I can hear it like the background music in a movie, punctuating every "scene", from the do you remember to the here and now. If I told someone, if I complained, I know that I‘d be permanently relieved of duty, that everyone would think I was well and truly crazy, the loose cannon that many of them have always suspected. What else can you think about a man who‘s been hearing the same song, over and over again inside his fucked-up head, for nearly three years? Since the first time it happened. Since the first ‚I didn‘t mean it, it won‘t happen again‘. Since the first time I went upside down and inside out at the lack of importance I was assigned in her life, and then the portrait of abject misery and palpable grief that reaffirmed my place in her universe. Or so I thought, until it happened again and again and again, being left out in the cold for weeks on end, not knowing and dying a little each time she turned her back to me when I walked into a room, or tried to talk to her, letting myself be pushed aside like a dirty dish for some ‚engineering problem‘, then suddenly being the centre of the known universe for days or weeks in succession. It was heady and addictive. Let‘s be honest. Since the first time she beat the hell out of me, then begged my forgiveness as she got me to sickbay. Hell, I should‘ve known better than to take it, than to lie for her. When the Doc asked what happened, I should‘ve told the truth. I should‘ve just said it, should‘ve looked right into the Doc‘s eyes and told him, "B‘Elanna hit me." I know I hadn‘t done anything. I got out of bed after she basically jumped me, to get something to eat. She nailed me right as I walked in her door before dinner. I hadn‘t eaten since breakfast because of the singularity in the area, couldn‘t leave the helm for lunch. Apparently, I woke her up, because next thing I knew, she was bouncing me off walls and over her furniture. I think it was the bulkhead that nearly broke my skull and had my ears ringing to rival Cappostrano, that put me down on the deck and wouldn‘t let me get up that stopped her. I‘m stressed out. I didn‘t mean it. I‘m so sorry. It was right after I covered for her that it got worse. I finally swiped a medkit from a wrecked shuttle, knowing full well that it would just be listed as destroyed,  to try and hide what was happening to me. What she was doing to me. Then she just up and walked away, barely speaking to me. I was so hooked on her, so dependent on her that I was convinced that I‘d done something to her. I begged. I pleaded. She gave me another chance. I was relieved. I didn‘t even complain when she broke my jaw, and told the Doc, for me, that I hadn‘t moved in time during a holodeck scenario. Then she walked away again. I couldn‘t seem to get through to her, she wouldn‘t hardly let me near her. Then we find out that she‘s trying to kill herself on the holodeck because she‘s suffering from survivor‘s guilt. I felt relieved, it wasn‘t me. Then we decided that we had to talk about what she‘d been doing. ‚If you were there for me more often, Tom. If you were more open, Tom. If you really loved me, Tom.‘  I knew then that it was my fault, that if I‘d made her feel like she could depend on me, that she wouldn‘t‘ve hurt herself like that. I didn‘t even try to defend myself from her after that. I deserved it. Look what I‘d done to her. I was lucky she wanted me.  I just started to hide in the holodeck off-shift, working on my car. She nearly killed me one night, I had forgotten that it was my turn to replicate dinner and I was late. Luckily, the Doc believed that I had been rock-climbing without the safeties again. I was ready to walk and she knew it. She increased her sessions with Tuvok, and said it was so she could learn to deal constructively with her anger. I stayed. After all, she was getting help. And she‘d stopped hitting me. Then we met Steth. ‚You raped me, Tom.‘ God. Two days later in sickbay. That time, the Doc and Tuvok knew what had happened. Told them that Steth had, in my body, hurt her. That I‘d surprised her and she‘d reacted badly.  That everything would be fine. I was glad that I‘d been saving up replicator credits for Harry‘s birthday present, because I needed to make four regenerators before she threw me out of her quarters and her life for a month after I got turned loose. And what did I do? I *courted* her, for fuck‘s sake. I made her feel like a goddamn princess. She took me back, life was good. Painful, but good, nevertheless. I should have known that leaving my socks on the floor one night after we were trying to reconstruct our decks after the Hirogen incident was a transgression deserving of five broken ribs and a punctured lung. ‚Yes, Doc, I know: watch where you‘re going next time you‘re in the jefferies tubes.‘ I forgave her, again. She was tired, she was stressed, she was overworked. I just forgot that so was every other person on the fucking ship. Including me. You think it‘s easy to rebuild and reprogram a fucking navigational array? That‘s when it started to overwhelm my life, you know. When I started hearing it every time I was alone. ‚I wonder why I stick around Sometimes I wish you would leave You say you‘ll love me forever Then you spit on me Your time is going to come I swear your time Is going to come I don‘t want to be your whipping boy Your pathetic little loser Someone you can ignore I‘m not going to let you overwhelm me Anymore (aw) I‘m not going to let you hurt me anymore I‘m not going to let you hit me anymore I‘m not going to let you kick me anymore" It was like someone was trying to make me see something. I kept shoving it away, repressing it, running without fleeing. Life went on. She kissed me, then she kicked me. After all, I deserved it. I didn‘t deserve respect, I didn‘t deserve to be loved the way my mom loved my dad. After all, how could someone like me deserve something so pure? I never told. I proved to her that I could be trusted, that I wasn‘t like her father. I wouldn‘t leave. The next time she unofficially dumped my ass, the song made me do some digging into the life of one Marco Torres, and his one divorce from a Klingon woman. I remember learning in my sociology class in the Academy that the children of abusers often repeat their parent‘s behaviour if there is no intervention. Marco Torres was granted an unconditional divorce because of severe physical and emotional abuse. Did I leave? Did I ask for help? Nope. When I realized that I‘d signed up for a race the weekend she‘d planned a vacation for us, I fully expected to have my lights extinguished. Then she joined me as my co-pilot, and things improved stunningly. Until she woke me up by beating me after the Flyer had cleared the ship‘s sensors. I pretended that I was unconscious for a while, as I fully, for the first time, realized what I was facing. Captain Janeway doesn‘t do divorces. The Parises don‘t get divorced, either. I couldn‘t run. I couldn‘t hide. I had no options left. I prayed for the first time in a long time. I managed to stay out of her way back aboard Voyager, by writing a new holodeck programme for the crew. She was busy in engineering, too, so she didn‘t really have that much time to slap me around for my transgressions. Whatever those were. Then that damn Bajoran monk appeared in our lives. Chakotay stunned me, but not enough to put me down for the count. Harry and I did our best to make life difficult for the Re-Maquis, as we started to called them. B‘Elanna came and separated me from the others, beat me up so badly I was the Doc‘s main concern for about an hour. Everyone was really sorry for B‘Elanna. She was going to have to live with what her other self had done to me. Ha. If they only knew then what they know now..... About three days after I debuted my new programme for the crew, B‘Elanna came into the messhall with that look in her eye. I didn‘t even blink when she grabbed my right arm in a grip so tight that numb fire flew down it. Said that I‘d forgotten our ‚date‘. Dragged me clean out of the messhall. Everyone was laughing, thinking it was a routine. I had just shut down, like I normally did when she began to make me pay for her day. This time it was different. There was an edge to her that made my bones shiver. I knew that Engineering had had a rough day, after Seven‘s latest efficiency report, but this...... I was fucking terrified. I actually tried to fight back. I tried to get away when she started in on me. When she finally had me on the floor, when I couldn‘t fight back anymore, the song drove out her screeches and curses. "I will not let you overwhelm me anymore (anymore) It can come from out of nowhere I don‘t want to be your simple saving grace Just another little victim with a happy face" She left for engineering, I guess just expecting me to be there when she got back. I managed to call Tuvok for help, managed to help him help me to Sickbay. Told him what she‘d been doing to me. Told the Doctor where my appropriated medical tricorder that had the history of my injuries was hidden in our quarters. Told the Captain what B‘Elanna had been doing to me. Chakotay came to see me. I know the Captain told him why she‘d thrown B‘Elanna into the brig, that his personal reclamation project had been doing her damndest to murder her personal reclamation project. He asked me the questions that I was still afraid to answer, to give voice to. If I did, it meant that I had just let her do that to me, that I was as weak as my father had thought. "Why? Why didn‘t you ask for help? Why did you marry her?" I did answer him, though. I told the truth. "Because I deserved it. Because I didn‘t know how to ask. I thought she loved me." Then, Harry walked in with the news that it was all over the ship. That everyone was stunned. That no one wanted to believe it was true. That not one person aboard would believe me if it hadn‘t been for the Captain and Tuvok throwing her into the brig under the highest security. I could hear the music swelling in my head, could hear it ripping through me skull. "I will not let you hurt me anymore I will not let you hit me anymore I will not let you twist me anymore No, I will not let you turn me inside out." Chakotay and Harry kept hammering at me, the same question over and over again.   Why now? Why ask for help now? Chakotay‘s tattoo was standing out from his face, like some chiaroscuro, after I answered him. "She‘s going to kill me. I don‘t want to die." ========================================================= Song quoted is "Overwhelming" from Everclear‘s _Songs from an American Movie Vol. Two: Good Time For A Bad Attitude_ Feedback? MillicentFawcett@aol.com