Maelstrom
By Aeron Lanart

ST:Voy / HL X-over.
PG-13: m/m and m/f relationships mentioned.
All Hail to Panzer/Davis and Paramount.
Concepts and characters used without permission.
Original characters and ideas are Mine, so is the story.


I'm sure I had no need for concern but it was hard, that morning, listening to them 
chatter as if nothing had happened while inside of me my emotions were churning wildly. 
I wanted to laugh or dance or sing. Something, anything to let everyone know the joy 
I felt. Short of making a ship wide broadcast or telling the Delaney sisters (as good 
as a ship wide broadcast) there wasn't really a way to do it and then, I wasn't really
 sure I wanted the whole ship to know. What could I say? 'I love Tom Paris and he loves 
me'? I *don't* think so. Anyway, who would understand? They'd all think I was cheating 
on Siannon, something I'd never do, or that Tom was taking advantage of our friendship 
and the fact that his best friend was supposed to be the naïve young one on the ship. 
Never mind that Geron is actually younger, nobody thinks of him as naïve anymore after 
a very loud, very public and very short liaison with *both* Delaneys. It's beside the 
point that I'm not naïve either, not really, a little green when I first arrived on 
the ship maybe, but certainly not naïve. 


People always seem to assume that I had this sort of 'first love' kind of relationship 
with Libby. Truth of it is, she was one of my closest friends, at least that's how it 
started. It was a relationship we both drifted into after helping each other get over 
a series of noisy (literally) and disastrous affairs. The funny thing was that even 
though we knew each other so well, it took me absolutely ages to ask her out once I'd 
decided that was the way I wanted our relationship to go. Parallels can be found in my 
situation here, I suppose. Yes, I missed her an awful lot at first and still do sometimes 
- no-one shared as much of my years in the academy, not even Danny - and there is always 
a special bond with the people you love, no matter how far away they are. 


Gods, I'm getting maudlin again, I don't know why as I've got so much to be happy about. 
I could just be worrying over how to approach B'Elanna, she's suffered just as much 
as the other two while I was being incommunicado. Not a wise decision, that,  but I 
didn't know how else to cope. I know I could and possibly should have gone to Tom 
with my problems when we first came back from *that place* , what would he have 
said. . .  'Welcome to the association of prison whores'? As if. He would have 
understood completely and not judged me like I judged myself. Problem was, I couldn't. 
Too many emotions were rattling round in my head and love can be perilously close to 
hate. If I'm honest with myself, that's the reason I kept away from the three of them, 
they were just too close. I think Siannon may have grasped the whole story but then 
she does have experience I could not even begin to guess at. 


How do you second guess someone who has been alive since the fall of the Roman empire, 
who's seen so many wars fought in so many ways, who's lived and loved and lost time 
and time again? She's such a strong person to have survived such horror and loss and 
kept her essential *goodness* intact that it never ceases to amaze me. It doesn't seem 
to matter how many 'lives' Siannon has lived, she's still a warm, loving human being 
and I can't help but find her remarkable for falling in love with me. Falling in love 
with her was so easy, I still sometimes wonder if it was fate that drove us together, 
even if we have agreed not to discuss that. Fate and love seemed to have joined hands 
and trampled together all over my life. It's not only Siannon, there's also Tom.


The first time I saw him he almost took my breath away, he was everything I wasn't. 
Then the cracks started to appear in that glowing facade widened by the so called 
'concern' of  Doctor Fitzgerald and Commander Cavit. I know it's supposed to be wrong 
to speak ill of the dead but those two men have only my scorn for not seeing the 
potential in Tom. From that first moment we were bound by something neither of us 
understood or appreciated. Love. For the first year or so it was the simpler ties 
of friendship that held us together, we shared our confidences with each other, our 
hopes, our fears, our past, our present. It was during this time that I think I fell 
in love with him, though I couldn't tell you exactly when it happened. In contrast, 
I can distinctly remember when I finally realised that I didn't only love him as a 
friend but that I was *in love* with him. Gods, I'll never forget that day, I felt 
like my world was about to end. In a way I suppose it was. Tom was leaving the ship 
to join the Talaxian convoy, forever I presumed, and I couldn't believe the despair 
that filled me at the thought of never seeing him again. When I said goodbye, I pulled 
him into a hug when all I wanted to do was hold him, kiss him until he was breathless 
and beg him not to leave me. Needless to say, I did nothing. I don't think anyone 
realised quite how strongly I felt, even when he returned to us. The relief I felt, 
the sheer joy of having him back with me, was immeasurable. 


After that it became a case of trying to hide my feelings for him under the veneer of 
friendship, a task I managed quite well although sometimes I felt like telling everyone, 
just to get it over with. I would have as well, but I didn't want to risk losing Tom, 
even as a friend, and I knew the problems he still had, stemming from his time in prison. 
He's such a private person, very few people see beyond the mask he wears to face the 
outside world, which is just the way he wants it. Okay, some things are genuine, like 
his god-awful sense of humour and sense of the ridiculous and a supreme confidence in 
certain of his abilities that is usually misconstrued as recklessness, not that he isn't 
reckless sometimes; he is, we all are. It can be guaranteed that he will probably be the 
originator of every bad joke on the ship, I'm not so sure about the good ones though. 


When the ship was captured by the Kazon, I lost him again and all I could do was hope 
that his amazing instinct to survive would keep him alive once more. I never lost that 
hope, no matter how fragile it seemed in those dark, cold nights on Hanon IV. The first 
thing I did when we returned to the bridge of Voyager was to look for him, to reassure 
myself that he was unscathed. He was a sight for sore eyes, grubby, dishevelled and *whole*. 
I only had time for one quick touch before duty called, but that was enough.  


I got much closer to B'Elanna during that time. We'd always worked well together, our 
minds seeming to complement each other. She has the flashes of brilliance, I have the 
tenacity to try and make her ideas work. As I saw so much of her and worked so closely
with her while on Hanon IV my feelings about her got really confused. By the time we 
were back on Voyager I was more than half convinced that I was in love with her as well. 
I never admitted that to Tom either, as I knew he loved her deeply and I would not 
interfere in the possible development of a relationship between them. They both deserved 
some happiness, whether they would find it with each other, I didn't know. Tom can be 
so damn *irritating* at times and B'Elanna is known more for her passion than her patience. 
I resigned myself to having neither of them as a lover but both of them as my closest 
friends on the ship, which is the way it stood when Siannon arrived and that wonderful, 
lovely woman shook us all up by simply being herself. I don't know what I'd do without 
her now.


And now? I have more than I ever dreamed of in those lonely nights on Hanon IV. I have 
the love of three beautiful people, a lover who is a constant surprise and delight to me, 
probably the love of my life; a man who is the closest thing to a soul mate I have ever 
known, who struggles against his internal demons with such determination it almost takes 
my breath away; and a clever, amazing woman who is my friend and like the sister I never 
had - closer than I ever thought possible without being 'in love'. Like I said, fate and 
love have been trampling over my life, with a vengeance. All I can do is accept each day 
as it comes, one of Siannon's philosophies. You might not be able to control life, but
there is no reason to let it control you.


So I sat there and listened to them talk, thanking the Gods and fate and love for granting 
my wish. It didn't calm my emotional maelstrom, but it gave me enough focus to face the day.