Title: Birthday Blues

Author: Amiroq. the KiTfox

Email: fitchett@netaccess.co.nz

Rating: R for violence, swearing, sex etc

Codes: A, D, F, Hc, R, V; K/T

Size: 14K

Teaser: Harry's birthday is out in the open and B'Elanna explains her qualms about the celebrations.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek etc, my dark side owns this story and any characters a dedicated fan doesn't recognize.

Author's Note: This is the darkest thing I have ever written. It has an R rating. I can't read this story, and if you're underage neither can you. Ha.

Jah, I've seen PoV (the ep, not point of view which I put as POV) and I know B'Elanna was actually laughing in that, but we all ignore episodes at some point don't we...?

None of the background in this story is true, or rather very little, and I know it will all be disputed in Pathways, but then that book contradicts the show on many things or so I've heard... You'd think Jeri Taylor could keep her own facts right, wouldn't you? I memorise everything about

My characters... <shrug> Ah, well. To the story!

Harry glanced at his wrist-chrono as he hurried down the hallway on deck 6. Shit, he was late. B'Elanna would kill him, especially after last night....

He dodged past a couple of crewmen who gave him a curious glance then muttered something about 'Chief Torres' and turned a last corner before he reached the holodeck. Oh, hell.

Pausing only to take a three second breather, he opened the door cautiously, stepped inside and was immediately accosted by a large group of his friends. "Surprise!" they chorused.

Tom. "Tom!" he exclaimed with mock exasperation. "This was *your* doing, wasn't it?"

"Who, me?" the blond pilot slash orderly asked innocently. "Maybe you should be looking at your girlfriend."

"She doesn't know my birthday. You do."

Tom considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "Who cares? We're here to have fun, not argue about who organised it. Who brought the wine?"

The group chuckled at this, and Tom led them into the festivities with all past tensions forgotten. While his friends were distracted, Harry glanced round for B'Elanna.

She was leaning on a tree, looking down at the grass of the field they were standing in, her arms folded across her chest in a stance Harry had seen many times when she was upset about something. That's not right, he thought, she should be having fun. He walked over and stroked her

cheek gently. "What's wrong?"

She looked up with her beautiful dark eyes troubled. "Nothing. Go enjoy yourself, I'm just thinking."

He shook his head. "Don't try telling me it's nothing, B'Elanna Torres. Don't you think I know you well enough to know when something's the matter?"

She hesitated, then tried another tactic. "I don't want to talk about it, Starfleet."

"Oh, you don't, do you Maquis?" He pinned her against the tree and whispered in her ear. "That's a pity, because you aren't going anywhere until you agree to tell me what's wrong with you today."

"Harry!"

"Please, Torres? I don't like to see you so upset."

She sighed, looked away then back at him, tried halfheartedly to break free, couldn't, looked away again, and muttered, "I hate birthdays."

"You *what*?"

"I said, I hate birthdays."

"Why?" he asked softly.

"Because it's the second unluckiest day of the year, the Day of Honour being the first. Because nearly half of the bad things that have ever happened to me happened on my birthday. Because it just reminds me that I was just some unwanted accident."

Her words were a bitter shock to Harry, like someone had dipped their hand in lemon juice and slapped him across the face, letting some of the juice slip past his lips and rest on his tongue, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't swallow them or get rid of the taste. He let her go before

answering, but she didn't bother moving. "That's not true. You aren't unwanted, B'Elanna, and you know it. We need you here. We all owe our lives to you. And I love you."

"Yeah, that's what everyone says."

"Everyone who? Tell me some of these terrible things that have happened on your birthday."

She refolded her arms and was silent for a few minutes, until Harry thought she wouldn't. Then she looked up at him and started to talk.

---

B'Elanna woke up with a feeling of excitement. Today was special, her daddy had said so, and her daddy was always right. Today was her fifth birthday, and daddy was going to take her on a transport to the larger continent on Kessik IV to celebrate.

She peeked at the chronometer to make sure it was alright to get up, and saw that it was already 0830. She climbed out, making sure to smooth the bedclothes nicely so no one could get mad at her, and started to put on the outfit daddy had helped her choose the night before, when she went

to bed. She felt very important: she was old enough now to dress herself, and go to school with the big kids.

The house was quiet when she left her room, so mummy and daddy mustn't be up yet, she reasoned. That meant she could play with her toys in peace until daddy came, without mummy telling her off for leaving things all over the room.

By the time the big bedroom door opened, it was 0900, and she was almost starting to get worried. Where was daddy? Maybe he'd gone to arrange something special for her as a surprise. And mummy must have gone too, because she was never in bed still this late in the morning.

She heard the door opening easily in the silent house, and looked up, even though she wouldn't be able to see who it was for a little while yet. She could tell from the footsteps that it was mummy, and very quickly moved her toys into the corner so she wouldn't get mad.

"Put that junk away," her mother snapped. "Do you want me to break my neck?"

Her mummy was mad at her! She didn't know what she'd done wrong, because she'd been told last time to play in the corner, but she hung her head and said she was sorry and put her toys away and listened to her mummy tell her she was an ungrateful child and she should act more like a civilized person and what was she doing in that dress it was far too short and she looked like a slut.

As her mummy went into the kitchen to make breakfast, she followed quietly, trying not to get in the way, and asked, "Where's daddy?"

"He's gone," was the curt reply.

"When's he coming back?"

"He's not. Go and change, I'm not going to have my child looking like a prostitute."

---

A pair of dark eyes peered round the trunk of a tree, checking to see if the way was clear. The eight year old had been out for a walk when some older boys from school had come out, and now she was cut off from home. She was scared, and wanted to go back, but what if they were there? Yet she knew that every second she wasted waiting was going to get her in more trouble with her mother, she wasn't even meant to have left the house.

She didn't see any sign of the boys. It was safe, then, if she was quick. She scampered across the road, praying like her father had taught her that she wouldn't be seen. Her mother would be really mad if she came home late *and* with torn and bloody clothes. She'd have to get knew ones, and medical care, and everything costs and does she know how ungrateful she's being and could you *please* get out from under my feet and do some work for once really you think you'd be able to do something other than laze around all day. She was nearly there...

It didn't work.

"Hey, look! It's that Klingon bitch! Let's have us some fun, eh?" There was nowhere to go. The boys grabbed her, and the one who had shouted punched her hard across the face. "You little bitch! Thought you could live with the humans, did you? We have a rule here, no dogs allowed.

Especially not mutts!" He punched her again, threw her down on the ground, kicked her again and again.

"Hey, give us a go at her, eh?" More kicking, punching, stones in her back, in her legs, in her face, hitting her, being dragged around and thrown down. The voices becames blurred, the words meaningless. She had no idea of the time, whether it was minutes or hours or days or years, or if

maybe it was eternity and this was Diablo, Hell. All she was aware of was the pain, until even that faded and left her, and she was in a void, not lying or sitting or standing, because she couldn't feel anything beneath her, she was floating through the blackness, blacker than night, blacker than her hair, or her mother's eyes when she was angry, or the shadows; blacker than anything she'd ever come across.

When the black left her too, she was in a hole and she hurt again. Every part of her ached, some more than others, and her skin and face and hair were all brown and sticky with blood caked with dirt from the hole.

I wonder how late I am, she thought first. She didn't have her watch that day, and even if she had it probably wouldn't have worked, and she wouldn't have been able to see it properly either. She was dizzy, and her vision was blurry, but she was aware of a blue colour above her, unless it was

below. She wasn't sure anymore.

So she went back to sleep.

She was in the hole for thirty two hours until her human grandma found her.

---

"Are you sure we should be here?" Luz Mejia glanced around the forest warily, catching sight of her friend a little ahead of her and to the side in the process. It was dark, and most of the trees had blackened trunks from repeated forest fires, letting loan to the nickname 'Blackwitch Forest'. It had B'Elanna's idea to come, B'Elanna's thirteen year old passion for adventure that lead them this deep in the undergrowth and B'Elanna's powers of persuasion over her only friend that brought

Luz with her.

"We'll be fine, Luz. Just imagine what they'll think when this gets around!" She let her mind wander, imagining kids she had always admired looking up to *her*, inviting *her* to parties, giggling at *her* jokes. And Luz would come with her, every step of the way. She wouldn't

leave her friend behind, not like the other girls.

She was jerked sharply out of her reverie by a piercing scream. It was Luz. Before she knew it, she was thrown to the ground and her clothes were being slashed to pieces, her skin was being caught as well and there was blood, so much blood...

Her legs were forced apart and she was being torn open, it hurts, it hurts it hurts she screamed in her head or was it out loud but it didn't matter because they wouldn't go away and there was so much blood and screaming and steel agony in her legs and her throat and her breasts her stomach

her vagina and she screamed and the scream sliced into her just like the knife and the pain but she didn't care she just kept screaming unless that was Luz but she really didn't care because it hurt so much and her mother would be furious at her for wasting another outfit.

She didn't care.

She opened her eyes without ever remembering closing them, and there was no one there except the birds and the trees and her. She rolled over, and suddenly in front of her Luz stared back into her eyes, lying on the mossy ground next to her. But there was something wrong, her face wasn't

right, she didn't look right. Her chest wasn't moving. It occured to B'Elanna that maybe she was dead. The idea seemed distant, somehow, like the hills she could barely see on a fine day. She held Luz' wrist, then felt her neck, and nothing happened. No pulse.

"No."

It couldn't be true. But it was, it was it was and it was her fault. Because she had made Luz to come here, she hadn't paid attention to what was happening, she could have saved her. Her eyes were dry and her body was wet with blood, everything was opposites. Luz was dead and she was

alive. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She should be dead! She laughed. Luz was dead! It seemed to be funny, it was funny, because it was wrong.

And it was her fault.

---

Harry had his arms around her, holding her close as she whispered the stories in a voice that didn't seems to care, and even as she did the tears that didn't come when she was thirteen ran down her face and onto his shoulder.

And everyone else was having fun.

FINIS