Star Trek Voyager: VX

Farther Shore

Stardate 48562.5

All the way forward, one deck below the mess hall, on the starboard side, a corridor took a slight jog and a cabin wall had been moved, creating an oddly shaped little alcove maybe two meters long and one wide. The visual lines of the structural supports in the corridor drew the eye inexorably away, and the tiny alcove was practically invisible from more than two meters distant.

Zariel had seen this very private little place on the ship's schematics her first week or two in the Delta Quadrant, and wondered if anyone else had paid any attention to it. She kept waiting for an opportunity to check it out, but also kept putting it off for some reason. She quite irrationally felt as though she needed to, had to, go and be in that small place, as though there were some comfort to be had there. She also felt, equally strongly and equally irrationally, that she would be unable to bear it if someone else should be there.

One particularly sad and stressful day, when she had mis-tapped every panel and misspelled every word, and everyone's loud and grating emotions were scraping the skin off her brain, and seventy thousand light years seemed now and forever insurmountable, the balance tipped, and she went.

She entered the mess hall on the starboard side, got a glass of juice from Neelix. She planned to nod and smile, wave her drink and feign a terrible hurry if anyone smiled and beckoned her to join them. No one did.

She exited the mess hall by the port side door, and stood and listened a moment. No footsteps heading toward the door inside the mess hall. She hurried to the turbolift, rode one deck down, and finally reached the end of the corridor and the little vagary of ship's construction.

There was no one there, and no sign there ever had been. The tiny alcove was comprised of three solid, unadorned, floor-to-ceiling walls, and one wall that was three-quarters window. At the moment, with Voyager moving at moderate warp, the stars streaked toward and past this window in multi-colored arrows of light.

Zariel stepped all the way inside, where she would also become invisible from the rest of the corridor, the rest of the ship. She longed to be able to do that for real, and decided this little cubbyhole would have to be good enough. She simply stood for a while, watching the stars streak by, and their motion seemed to lighten her heart, to take away a miniscule piece of the weight that daily seemed to crush her. Each star that flew by was one little piece off that seventy thousand light years, one little bit closer to home, to her boys.

Over the days and weeks that followed, Zariel could often be found, if anyone had been looking, in what she came to think of as her cubbyhole. At first she simply stood and watched the stars, but as she came to spend more and more time there, she began to lean a shoulder against the bulkheads, then to kneel on the floor, until eventually she would be sitting on the floor with one shoulder braced against the forward bulkhead, just under the window, and her entire body weight leaned against it. She felt as though she could not completely relax anywhere else, as though she were derelict in a duty if she were not there, leaning on the forward-most bulkhead, pushing the ship across that seventy thousand light years. After spending any length of time there, Zariel would leave stiff of body and very sore of shoulder.

One day, leaning against the forward wall under the windows, leaning harder than ever into its increasingly elusive comfort, Zariel's comm badge chirped, followed by her name. She sat up and tapped it.

"Lieutenant Sindile here. Yes, Captain?"

Captain Janeway said, "Please meet me in the bridge briefing room at 1130 hours today."

"Already there, Captain."

"Pardon?"

"I'm sorry, Captain, I meant, I'll be there."

Zariel did not mention that her duty shift began at 1230 hours; she had gotten to know her captain at least that well – the Captain would have checked the duty roster.