Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek: Voyager, and the souls of everyone associated with it. The text is my Muse's, the owner of my soul.

From the moment she could talk, I was "Sissy."

I hated it. The simple appellation of love and adoration incensed me. That little brat had halved the amount of time my parents had for me, halved the attention I received, halved my parents' love for me; what right did she have to love me? She should have despised me . . . like I despised her.

I alternately called her "that vulky little goat" and "that little toad." She was never "my sister" unless an adjective modified the noun, something along the lines of "annoying" or "spoiled." I never called her by name unless she was in trouble and I was ratting her out to Mom, and I made sure I never called her by name to her face. It was always, "hey, you" or "brat."

She had to have known I loathed her. After all the times I whacked her around, or hid her toys, or fed her stuffed animals to the dog . . . how could she not have known I loathed her? But love is patient, love is kind, and love forgives. I can still remember that cherubic toddler face staring lovingly up at me and saying, "I wuv you . . . sissy."

As she grew older, she learned to retaliate. "Mom! The little brat . . ." became about the only way I addressed my parents. I remember her putting snakes in my container of sunscreen, hiding my tennis racket, sneaking all sorts of insects and amphibians into my bed, and tying my shoes together every chance she got. Not to say that I didn't respond in kind. I filled her hairbrush with whipped cream, squirted whipped cream on her as she slept, more than once, and buried most of her baby dolls.

But still, even in the midst of sibling warfare, she called me "sissy." I remember the far-from-innocent six-year-old coming to me, hairbrush and barrettes in hand, and shyly asking, "Sissy, will you do my hair?" I remember the tearful eight-year-old coming to me and sobbing, "Sissy, will you help me fix my doll?" after the dog got ahold of it. And I remember the ten-year-old coming to me and asking, "Sissy, will you help me pick out my outfit for the fifth-grade graduation?"

Once she hit puberty and teenager-dom, our relationship changed again. The eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth sibling warfare became verbal battles, each of us trying to out-scream the other. I found her even more obnoxious and annoying, paradoxically. Odd how finding a frog in your bed isn't so annoying as being beaten in a battle of wits by your little sister is. And it didn't help much that Mom and Daddy always sided with her. Well, Mom did most of the time, and Daddy always did, when he was around. She was their favorite. The little lazy layabed, who couldn't be pressed into doing anything meaningful. I attacked school with the same intensity I gave everything important. I was head of my class, the darling of all my teachers. She had to be dragged into school, was barely passing, and most of her teachers didn't know what to do with her. Yet she was their favorite.

My entrance into the Academy was a welcome relief. It meant the beginning of my life without a sister. I'd be alone, a thousand miles away from our house. My sister could never follow me to San Fransisco, would never follow me.

Yet on the night before I left for the Academy, she came to me, bearing a small wrapped present. "Here, sissy," she said. "It's a combination graduation/going away present."

I snorted. She was fourteen years old at the time. "Sissy" seemed like such a babyish thing to say. Then again, I was eighteen, and I knew everything. My recent graduation had closed the door on childhood. My sister and her yet-little-girlish ways irritated me.

Grudgingly, I accepted the little box from her. I set it beside me on the sofa, anxious to return to the quadrilateral equation I was solving. She had different plans, though. "Open it," she urged me. I reluctantly dropped the padd and pulled the wrapping off the gift. Inside was a small locket. When I opened it, I saw a picture of my family: my mother, my father -- in a rare appearance at home -- and my sister.

I looked at her. She understood the tacit question in my eyes and explained, "So we'll never be far from your heart while you're at the Academy." Oh, just what I didn't want. "Here, put it on," she continued. She fastened the little golden chain around my neck. True to her words, the little golden heart lay just above my real beating heart . . . but the only heart that held love was the golden one. "Thanks," I said gruffly, insincerely.

She smiled at me. "I hope you do well at the Academy, Sissy." And she was gone.

Eight years saw changes in the both of us. She matured physically, if not mentally; assembled a herd of dogs and cats; decided she wanted to be a painter; stuck close to home and kept my parents company. I moved out into space; saw some beautiful things; saw some horrible things; changed for the better; changed for the worse; forgot I had a family or that I even needed a family.

Then I met Justin. Family became important to me again. He'd lost his family; mine could be a surrogate. When I brought him home, though, my sister acted just like she always had. She couldn't see past the end of her own nose and was typically uncaring, and unconcerned. To add insult to injury, my parents -- well, Daddy in particular -- wouldn't make her see the error of her ways. We were adults, he said. We had to settle our differences like adults. The taste of home soured in my mouth ever so slightly.

Then the accident . . . and I lost Daddy and Justin. Almost against my will, I returned to the nest once more . . . I needed somewhere to rest, and my home was the only place I had. It meant dealing with my sister, though, and dealing with the world that had dealt me the greatest blow I'd ever suffered. To escape from it all, I drowned my sorrows in pillows and blankets, refusing to emerge from bed. I subsisted on what my mother brought me; I arose only to use the restroom.

Until the day my sister decided to drown my sorrows in ice water. From that moment, I spent more time with my sister than I ever had before. Most of it, I spent loathing her. Again, she had to have known, but it didn't seem to faze her. Resentment seethed in me constantly. Everything rolled off my sister's back like water off a duck's back. What would it take to make her care? She'd lost her father just like I had. Yet she gaily laughed, and cheerily talked about her plans for the garden, and oohed and aahed over her herd of animals. I knew she was different from the rest of us, but I didn't think she was so self-absorbed that not even her father's death could bring grief.

Her efforts, however unappreciated, worked, though. I rejoined the world and moved on. There could be life without Daddy and Justin, however hard it was. As the months passed, my hindsight cleared and I saw just what my sister had done for me. She hadn't been self-absorbed or uncaring at all. Instead, she had been absorbed in and cared about . . . me. The one who had tormented her as she was growing up. The one who pretended she didn't have a sister. The one who had despised her even as she saved me. She had woken me up, risked my wrath, poked me and prodded me, fed me and talked to me, walked me and pushed me. She had made me live when I wanted to die, made me run when I wanted to crawl.

She had pulled me back from the edge . . . and I repaid her with hostility.

One evening, I confronted her about it. "Why did you do the things you did?" I asked. "Why didn't you let me flounder in self-pity anymore? Why did you take it upon yourself to show me the world still went on?"

She smiled at me, and I again saw the adoring toddler. "Because you're my sissy," she answered.

And I smiled. Because she was . . . my sissy.