A Moment or Two
By ralst
I think what scares me the most about all this is the idea of giving over control. Making decisions, taking action, being arrogantly self sufficient, it is all my way of staying sane. Staying one step ahead of my past. By giving myself completely into the hands of someone else I am risking my individuality in a way I've never had to guard against before. Not a collective whispering words of command and instruction in my mind but a warm and loving influence on my very being. I will no longer be simply me but part of something bigger, an us.
"Seven?" her voice is hesitant, no doubt troubled by my uncharacteristic behaviour. "Did you want something?"
Do I want something? No. I want everything. Every smile that traverses her lips, every look that sets my heart or loins on fire. I want everything. Everything that is her or ever could be her. "May I come in?"
"Of course," B'Elanna's invitation is accompanied by an intensification of her bemusement, "you know you don't have to ask."
Normally that would be true. The days of my hesitant requests for entrance have long since past but on this occasion I felt it improper to simply use the code she had supplied me with. Now more than ever before I want her tacit permission for my being here. If all goes as I hope, it will be the last time I will ever have to ask.
"I apologise for intruding on you at such a late hour," my voice sounds mechanical even to me, "I hope I haven't interrupted your slumber?"
"What? No," B'Elanna's voice has bypassed bemused and is headed straight for concerned, "why are you talking like that? Has something happened?"
How am I supposed to answer that question? Everything and nothing? An hour before I was quietly drinking one of my nutritional supplements in the messhall. Then a simple look towards a smiling couple by the entrance had changed my life or merely forced a change I have been unconsciously delaying for weeks. They looked so happy and in love. Yet I knew, deep in my soul, that they weren't. Their emotions were of the moment. Lust, affection, need. It was all there but no more. It was then that I realised that I had the last ingredient that those two lacked. I had love.
"Would you please sit down?" There was fear on her face now, fear that I had caused. It sent a tremor down my spine and my hand automatically grasped hers in an attempt to convey a little of the love I was feeling. I do not believe my attempt was entirely successful but it was enough to belay the full extent of her concern from reaching fruition. She sat primly in her seat, her posture almost a mirror image of my own during my first few years aboard Voyager. "B'Elanna, there is something I wish to ask you," my voice has thankfully lost it's mechanical edge and is to some extent mirroring the emotions that are in my breast. I pause. Not for any theatrical reason or to regain my breath, but just to savour this moment of total anxiety and nerve wrenching fear. "Will you marry me?"
My words had been strong, direct and thankfully lacking in the desperation and pleading that was filling my soul. It was the first time in a long while that I missed being Borg. Missed the option of just taking what I wanted with a dismissive recitation of 'Resistance is Futile'. Yet if I were Borg I could not feel love and without that love I don't think I could go on existing.
I look to her now. Her gaze both steady and unreadable. It is a face I have studied in detail over the last year, its every nuance mapped and stored within my eidetic memory. But now, as I look at her, it is as if I was feasting on her beauty for the first time. All is new and wondrous, and so, so terrifying.
At last her gaze shifts and I am released from the paralysing effect of her regard. I don't know whether her bowed head is a good sign or bad but my stomach tightens in anticipation of my undoing. Then it happens. A sight that could warm the hearts of even the most lost of souls. She smiles at me. At me. And with that one sign I feel the tears gathering and my heart bursting with the anticipation of ecstasy. Her answer known even before the word forms on her lips.
"Yes."
Complete