AUTHOR: Sally
RATING: PG13
SUMMARY: Make the craziest wish you can in response to an email forward and perhaps it can come true
DISCLAIMER: The story is my warped imagination; the characters with the exception of Hannah and Carmel are not.
NOTE: I’d had so many forward emails the one day that my mind went crazy. No offense to anyone but I just can’t stand the kind mentioned in this short. And I get at least one a day…
A beep on the screen indicated a message coming in. Hoping that it was the recommendation I was waiting on, I hit the envelope symbol and waited for the message to open. I almost groaned aloud when I saw it. Another forward. Yesterday I’d received the same forward twice, from different sources. And now here was another one of those ‘make a wish and forward this message’ messages.
“Make a wish and forward this on to seven people. Within five minutes your wish will come true. But only if you keep the chain. If you delete this message you’ll have a whole year of bad luck.”
I’d lost count of how many I’d deleted. And my luck hadn’t noticeably changed.
But this time I think I was finally having enough. What if I came up with the craziest wish I could think of, one that could never come true in five years, let alone five minutes? So I picked seven addresses randomly out of my address book and made that wish. And then I went back to work.
And then I woke up. Doesn’t that sound dumb? It’s the kind of line your teacher told you never to include in a story when you were eight. Only I really did wake up. It was dark outside, which didn’t make much difference to me since the days had been getting shorter anyway with the onset of winter. But there was this insistent beeping coming from somewhere in the room and the nagging feeling that I was not alone either.
“Janeway to Commander Chakotay.”
My first thought was “what a bitch! Why can’t she just let him sleep?” My second was “oh shit!” The being in the bed beside me stirred slightly and grunted. I leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sleeper and immediately recognized him from the pictures I’d seen. No doubt about it, my bed partner was the Maquis Chakotay.
I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. I kicked him. Hard.
He rolled over onto his back and blinked his eyes open at me. “What?” he asked groggily.
“Captain’s calling you,” I hissed back.
He ran a hand over his face and groaned. “Great,” he muttered and leaned over to pick up his uniform jacket, leaving me with a rather remarkable view of his behind. He focused in on his commbadge. “This is Chakotay.”
Her voice came across crisp, clear and extremely brisk. “I’m in astrometrics, Commander, and I believe there’s something you should see.”
Great. The captain and no doubt Seven of Nine. Two beings on this ship who evidently didn’t need that much sleep.
“Kathryn, it’s…” He lifted his head and I saw him squint at the chronometer. “Its only oh five hundred hours.”
So he does call her Kathryn off duty, I marveled. And then frowned. Hang on, who was he in bed with? Ahem!
He sighed and slid out of bed. Keeping his back to me, which was probably just as well all things considered, he picked the remainder of his clothes up off the floor and got dressed. Then he turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll see you later, okay?” And then he did the really surprising thing. He leaned in closer and kissed me. His lips actually made contact with mine.
He left and I collapsed back down on the bed. In the few minutes I’d been awake I’d now managed to ascertain a few things. One, I was definitely not at my desk anymore and two, it seemed perfectly natural for me to be where I was. At least where he was concerned anyway. Chakotay had made it seem like it was not unusual for either of us to be where we were. Finally, it was apparent that we were an item, at least it seemed like it. If I was dreaming I knew then that I damn well did not want to wake up!
Eventually there was another beeping which I managed to discover was the chronometer going off. Wonderful! I never was an early morning person. Somehow I managed to find my clothing, surprised to discover that my jacket was also red indicating command. The next task was to find out where the hell I was supposed to be.
“Computer,” I called out on a hunch. “Pull up personnel file for Hannah Darva.”
“Ensign Darva,” the computer intoned back at me. Ensign? I was an ensign? The great Chakotay was dating an ensign? It turned out I had a position in ship’s administration. Nothing new there then, unless you count the fact that I hadn’t realised there was such a position. But even here I was still a lowly admin assistant. And who did I report to? None other but Chakotay. Just wonderful. This guy obviously had no regard for ship protocol.
With the help of the computer I managed to get to my office, which I had completely to myself. From there it was a simple matter of activating the PADDs strewn across my desk to discover what my workload was. And it was nothing too exciting. I managed to stab myself in the thumb with my commbadge while fiddling with it. I dropped it to the desk and sucked on the wound. Eventually the bleeding stopped. I was relieved I wouldn’t have to go see the EMH. I’d heard strange things about him.
The highlight of my day was probably Chakotay popping his head in to promise me dinner. He said he’d offer me lunch but the captain was going overboard again in the work department and he needed to make sure she ate something. So they were going to the messhall. It was obvious I wasn’t invited and I could be wrong but it seemed that he was in one heck of a hurry to get to her.
Dinner for us also turned out to be in the messhall. Some dinner. Yet again he seemed in some big hurry to be someplace. Turns out that someplace was wherever the captain was because she called him in the middle of our time together. He smiled, apologised again, and suggested that I join the others in Sandrines on the holodeck.
This time there was no kiss.
On the holodeck I finally got an opportunity to meet the other members of the senior crew. I took to B’Elanna immediately, although I couldn’t see how she and Paris had lasted this long. Harry, I don’t know, there was something about him I just didn’t like. Whereas Paris had a charm to go along with the arrogance, it seemed that Kim was just developing the arrogance.
The topic of conversation around the pool table soon changed to the current status of Tom’s pools. It became clear to me then that whatever relationship Chakotay and I had was being kept very quiet and I’m glad I hadn’t opened my mouth and put my foot in it. The others had my man paired off with the Captain, which I wasn’t best impressed with. He was mine, for goodness sakes. Although it had also become clear to me that she most definitely had him under her thumb. No doubt, Starfleet ruled here. Not a Maquis code in evidence.
The evening drew to a close, B’Elanna told me she’d meet me in the morning for a workout, and I wearily walked to my quarters alone. Not surprisingly they were empty.
“Computer, state location of Chakotay.”
“Commander Chakotay is in Captain Janeway’s quarters.”
I sighed. It looked as though I was fighting a losing battle for his attention here. I went to bed and woke up. Alone.
The next few days were the same mix of work and pool. I managed to grab the odd meal with Chakotay and occasionally I persuaded him to stay the night. He just went straight to sleep though, murmuring apologies that he was just too tired for anything else. She had him working as hard as she was.
B’Elanna and I, it turned out, were great friends. We worked out together, shot pool together and teamed up against Tom and Harry. It was great fun to tease the two of them but I still felt the knots in my stomach whenever they mentioned the supposed relationship between the captain and Chakotay.
But the fifth night was the worst, the night I’d decided I’d made a terrible mistake in wishing what I had. He came to my quarters late. I was already in bed, almost asleep, when he crept in and crawled into bed. Within moments he was asleep but his slight movements had only served to wake me. I scooted over and huddled into his embrace, his arms falling over me, covering me. After so long without company I was beginning to appreciate the few nights I’d had with him.
He shifted slightly. He gripped me tighter.
“Kathryn,” he murmured. I thought I was imagining things but then he repeated it and sighed.
That did it. I was out of his arms, out of the bed and, grabbing a blanket on the way, spent the rest of the night on the couch. Whatever was between us was now over. Either he left or I did. If he wanted her then fair enough. She could have him. And now my suspicious mind was kicking in and I was left wondering if the rumours were true. Perhaps there was something going on between them. Maybe I could still salvage something and clean up Paris’ pools.
The next morning I woke up early and left before he did. I couldn’t stand to explain why I had not slept in my own bed. I headed to my office and began running my messages.
I couldn’t believe it. There was a forward from Tom Paris, one of those ‘make a wish and pass this message on to seven people’ forwards. I nearly laughed out loud. In that moment my mind was made up. I pulled up seven names from the ship’s database, and added in Chakotay and the captain. Perhaps they would make better wishes than I had.
I hit the send key.
“Ms. Darva?” I jerked my head up to come face to face with Carmel, the catering assistant. “You okay, ma’am?”
I nodded and she seemed satisfied, smiling at me and walking away.
I looked around at my surroundings. Nothing seemed totally out of the ordinary but I was no longer on Voyager. This was most definitely the Star Fleet Communications Building. In the distance I could hear Reg Barclay shouting about something. He’d been here a lot lately, ever since they’d managed to establish some form of interstellar communication with someplace.
I leaned back in my chair and raised my hands up behind my head, joining my fingers together. A sudden burst of pain hit me and I lowered my hands. There on my thumb was the cut from my commbadge. As I’d refused to go to sickbay it had taken its time to heal. That was my proof. My crazy wish had actually come true, and in five minutes too judging by the chronometer. The original forwarded message was still on my computer screen.
I hit the delete key.
FINIS