Part 2 added on 31 May 2001
Disclaimers are in part 1.
Rating: PG
Annika was crying, loudly. B'Elanna was running as fast as her tiny legs could carry her, gleefully shouting "No!" over and over at the Doctor. If Kathryn hadn't been in shock, she would have laughed at the young Klingon's antics. Seven now had a full head of blonde curls and B'Elanna had black tresses all the way down to her waist. Both appeared to be about two tears old.
It was only a week and a half since the accident.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" B'Elanna sang, waving some medical instrument over her head, then ducking into a cabinet, as if it would hide her. Seven rubbed her chubby hands across her nose, leaving a wet trail behind and began giggling. As the Doctor tried to haul B'Elanna out of the cabinet, she suddenly flung herself from it and ran to Annika, grinning at her wildly.
"Lala!" Annika shrieked joyfully. "Lala ba!"
"Nika ba! Nika NO!" B'Elanna shrieked back, happily, grinning and flinging the medical instrument. One of her wildly flailing arms accidentally hit Seven in the nose and the little girl's eyes filled instantly with tears. A trickle of blood ran from her nose and B'Elanna stared, horrified. She immediately began adding her wails to Annika's and they stood and sat respectively, their heads thrown back in twin expressions of childhood torment.
"They have to be separated! I can't raise them both, I'm sorry!" Sam said. There was a bruise blossoming on her arm, as well as a bald patch on the side of her head. "They're too much, together. If they had grown more slowly, then maybe, but..." she looked, tearfully, at the crying children, whom the doctor was trying to calm down.
Kathryn's head exploded in pain.
"B'Elanna, NO!" Janeway yelled, grabbing the toddler away from her computer console, where she had been merrily hanging, bending the delicate device at an odd angle. She had no idea why she had agreed to take the child, she just seemed so attached to the tyke...
"Cappa, bad!" B'Elanna shrieked as she was torn away from her toy. Immediately, she threw herself on the ground and began kicking, pounding and screaming. Kathryn walked away, repeating like a mantra, in her head, 'Don't give her the satisfaction. Don't give her the satisfaction' It worked and B'Elanna, furious that she was being ignored, stood and stomped up to stand in front of the Captain, who had calmly picked up her coffee and was reading a padd.
B'Elanna smacked the padd out of Kathryn's hand and Kathryn set her coffee cup down to pick the padd back up.
"That's not how you get my attention. Ask nicely," Janeway reprimanded gently and resumed looking at the padd, not really reading, as the child mulled over the information she had been given.
"Pay game weh me?" B'Elanna asked carefully, scratching her head. Janeway felt her heart soar in delight. It was the first time she had been able to get through to B'Elanna since the child had come to live with her three weeks ago. In that time, she had shown no signs of another rapid growth spurt and the Doctor had no idea how to predict one.
"Please, B'Elanna. Say please when asking a question." B'Elanna seemed to think about it, then responded quietly with a muttered...
"Peez?" She rolled her head around and pulled at her dress while digging her toe against the floor.
"Then, yes, I would love to play a game with you," Kathryn said, smiling. B'Elanna beamed back.
"No, Sev--Annika!" Naomi yelled, grabbing back the picture she had been drawing and accidentally knocking over the unstable younger girl. Annika wasn't impressed however, since she fell down routinely every few minutes anyway. However, the bright colors on the drawing pad were still very tempting for her and she just resumed her attempts to snatch it from who she now considered her older sister.
"Pweee, Momee?"
"Naomi," the nine-year aged half Ktarian said irritably. "And no. It's mine."
"Mine?" Annika asked.
"No, not yours," Naomi said, pointing at Annika. She poked herself in the chest for emphasis. "Mine. I spent two days replicator rations on this and so it belongs to me."
It was the wrong thing to say. Annika snatched the pens and a wadded sheet of paper, declaring "Mine!" as she gleefully captured them, then ran as fast as she could, causing Naomi to chase her out into the corridor. Annika ran as fast as her little legs would carry her, dropping pens along the way and causing Naomi to slow down to catch them.
Annika laughed until she looked over her shoulder and saw the anger on Naomi's face. Then she gave a worried cry and dropped the rest of her booty. Naomi stopped to gather it up, giving Annika enough time to find a Jeffries hatch and pull it open. As she had seen B'Elanna do with the cabinet in Sickbay, she climbed in and pulled it shut behind her, before Naomi had turned the corner. She began crawling as fast as she could.
There was a wall ahead of her, but it parted in the middle as she approached and she crossed it, just as Naomi entered the tube, shouting, "No, Annika! Come back!"
Annika did not want to go back. Naomi was mad at her and she didn't want to be with someone who was mad. She kept crawling until she reached a hole in the ground. She pondered the ladder rungs as Naomi came closer and she reached out, lost her balance and fell.
She screamed as she plummeted, hearing Naomi screaming above her. She whirled in mid-air and felt a pain shoot through her body as she landed. Naomi looked down at the unmoving form and didn't know what to do. She wasn't wearing a commbadge and there were no comm panels anywhere that she could see.
She grabbed the ladder and swung herself onto it, crawling down to Annika. She looked at the twisted little body and forced herself to swallow the pulse in her throat and check for Annika's. It was there, strong and steady. She was breathing fine and Naomi now noticed that the only thing that seemed to be out of place was her arm, which was twisted at two wrong angles.
She carefully scooped Annika into her arms and looked around. She realized what a bind she was in. She couldn't climb the ladder with Annika in her arms, nor could she crawl through the narrow tunnels inside Voyager. She laid Annika back down and began crawling down the nearest tube, hoping that it didn't take too long to get back to Annika.
B'Elanna gave a powerful scream and dropped the big, colorful ball she was about to toss to Captain Janeway. Kathryn noticed what was happening at once. The tiny arms were getting longer, almost before her eyes and she grabbed the child up. She bolted down the corridor, B'Elanna kicking and screaming as she went. The turbolift took a moment to arrive, then she jumped aboard and ordered it to Sickbay, not really noticing Tuvok, standing stoically in the corner.
Not until B'Elanna kicked him. Kathryn grabbed the girl in the best position she could to keep her from flailing her aching limbs into herself or her Security Chief again, while apologizing.
"Is she all right?" Tuvok asked, showing no sign of irritation or discomfort at the level of noise B'Elanna was producing or the bruise starting to swell up on his hand. He merely bent to pick up the padd she had dislodged and asked his question.
"She's having a growth spurt," Kathryn explained as the doors hissed open. She threw herself through them and ran to the medical bay, unaware that Annika was going through the same thing alone, at the bottom of a ladder in Jeffries Tube 16.
To be continued....