Chapter 56
The reign of One of Many, née Annika Hansen; Queen of Borg.
Year 01, Month 11, Day 21, Hour 12, Minute 09.
"I give up."
"Sorry, can you say that again, I think I didn't quite hear you there," B'Elanna said with a grin.
"You heard me perfectly," Seven disagreed as she looked out through the window and over the wonderful winter scene that stretched as far as the eye could see. "But just to make you happy, I said that I give up. I cannot think of the reason why we are alone in a nice and warm cabin in the middle of a beautiful winter setting. You asked Pagsha and Katzi to look after Vasha, you gave Zizirk the day off, you promised Vasha that we would spend the late afternoon with her. All so that we could spend the morning and early afternoon here."
"Did you enjoy our time?" B'Elanna asked. "We've got two more hours by the way."
"I loved the time we spent here. I merely cannot think of a reason."
"Is spending time with you alone not enough of a reason?" B'Elanna asked reasonably. "Maybe I just wanted a day just with the two of us."
"First, since Pagsha and Katzi moved in we have taken two days just for us, and the secondary quarters worked just fine for that. Second, no, you cannot simply do this because you want to. You achieve too much pleasure from thinking up an anniversary and then using that anniversary as an excuse to spend the entire day on the holodeck; be it alone, with our family, or with all of our friends. So, while you may have wanted the time alone, you first will have thought up some anniversary."
B'Elanna joined her Mate and looked out the window as well. She molded her body against her lover from behind and closed her arms around her. She placed a soft kiss on that wonderful neck. "Those are all real and honest dates," she defended with a grin, both she and her Mate knowing only too well how right Seven was.
"I never disputed that," Seven agreed with an indulging smile. She knew that B'Elanna was teasing her. But that was alright; she had been able to come up with a reason that Seven couldn't think of, so B'Elanna had all the right to bask in that achievement for a moment. "And I do love the fact that this day was my first ever experience of making love in the snow... which I am certain was not as cold as snow normally is. Thank you for making that little change in the programming by the way. I am sure that under the normal setting we would not have managed to lay in it for that long, no matter how much heat we created."
"Yeah," B'Elanna admitted. "I never did the nude in the snow thing, and today seemed like a good day to try it. It was fun, but I also didn't want to freeze things I don't want to have frozen. So I set the temperature low enough to just have a little bite and be distracting, but not distracting enough to stop what we were doing."
Seven's broad smile showed how much she too had enjoyed the repeated lovemaking. "So, what is it?" She asked, letting B'Elanna know that she really was curious. She loved how B'Elanna could come up with new reasons all the time, and she couldn't wait to find out what this one was. Especially because new reasons tended to result in the day being repeated again the next time the anniversary came around.
"Do we have to wait longer or shorter than a year to do this again?"
"Exactly one year, if we make it that far that is. Seven, believe it or not, but today is the anniversary of our last fight. It's exactly one year now."
"It cannot be. We have disagreements all the time."
"Disagreements are not fights," B'Elanna countered. "This right now is a disagreement, but we're not fighting. Remember, the fights we had, how we shouted at each other... alright, how I shouted and you would become stubbornly over-rational. The fights we both loved so much to have back then. So much that when Janeway put us in the brig you even worried that we'd stop fighting? We haven't had one of those in a year now. Now we disagree, discuss things, and then come to an agreement on it."
Seven went over the events ever since they left Voyager and realized that B'Elanna was right. "I really did like our last fight, yet at the same time it did not fill me with passion like the fights before it did; it felt staged."
"Because we don't need them anymore. We fought because it was a good release of energy... frankly baby, I prefer to take you to bed and love you to get rid of that energy. It just took us a year to realize that we didn't need the fights at all."
"I think less than that," Seven disagreed, the more she thought about it, the more she knew B'Elanna was right. "Yes, our last fight was one year ago, but it was over two months before our last fight before that, and over one month before that."
"Where as in the beginning when we were here we still fought almost every second day," B'Elanna agreed.
Seven looked at the scenery once more. Feeling that the discussion about their fights was over because they both agreed that they no longer needed, or wanted them, Seven turned around in her lover's arms and changed the subject.
"A year is a long time to wait. I do like the idea of celebrating once every year that we no longer fight by coming here alone, but I do like this, and I think I would like to come back here more often."
"We can," B'Elanna assured. "There's nothing that says that we can't run this program more often than once a year. Though this is only a holographic creation, I think that this would be a nice counter to our Zamonan resort. You're right, I also like this. I wouldn't mind hopping back here a few hours every two weeks or so. I'm sure that Vasha, Pagsha, and Katzi will like it as well."
B'Elanna's eyes lit up. "Oh yeah, we need to come here with Vasha. I want to play in the snow with her."
"You want to teach her how to throw snowballs," Seven accused with a tolerant smile.
"Well, maybe a little," B'Elanna relented. "It's the holodeck after all, so we can cheat a little with temperatures so that her little fingers don't freeze off. We could even make a copy of our cabin on Zamona and have that one here as well. With a few changes like having glass in the windows. That way we could come here in the afternoon and stay until the next day and go to work directly from here."
"Two or three bedrooms in that cabin?" Seven asked with a smirk.
B'Elanna winked back. "Two. I did say a copy of the Zamonan cabin. But here we can put soundproofing around Vasha's bedroom, and have sensors in her room so that we can hear her if needed," B'Elanna stated firmly with a grin.
Seven stepped out of the embrace but didn't let go of the hands. "Maybe... maybe we should not. The way a child is raised indicates how she will behave. We can shield her, or we can curb our lusts when Vasha can hear us. Or we can learn to ignore the fact that our daughter might hear us and she will grow up with it being a normal thing for her to hear some strange sounds coming through the wall sometimes."
"Seven, you can't," B'Elanna started, only to be interrupted.
"Vasha Borg. Remember her last name, love? She will be Queen of the Borg one day. Which means that she will also be Queen over deck sixty-nine. I am not saying that you should decide now, but just think about it. I honestly think that our daughter should grow up knowing that sex is a normal thing."
B'Elanna nodded reluctantly. "Growing up knowing, alright. But if she tries fooling around before she is at least twenty I'll kick her butt and kill the person she fooled with."
"But of course you will," Seven said tolerantly.
"Alright," B'Elanna relented. "Two bedrooms it is, and no soundproofing." Despite her word she couldn't help but cringe. But she knew that Seven was right. They could raise their daughter safely, but they couldn't shelter her. Not the next Queen of Borg. "Unless Pagsha and Katzi would prefer their own bedroom. But judging from how much time they spend in ours, I don't think that'll be a problem."
"I like how our daughter adapted to Pagsha and Katzi living with us," Seven said thoughtfully.
B'Elanna laughed. "Adapted? Honey, that sounds like she had to get used to the idea, and not like how it really went. Her saying, 'you live here too now? Good'."
Then B'Elanna frowned. "Vasha knows that her four mothers sleep in one bedroom, and we just agreed that we would stop sheltering Vasha behind soundproofing... assuming that Pagsha and Katzi agree. I'm almost certain that Katzi agrees since she grew is in a society where people have very good hearing and no soundproofing around their huts. She probably thinks that it's perfectly normal. Pagsha,"
"Pagsha will agree that its for the best," Seven said confidently, before adding amused, "And then resolutely ban all thoughts from her mind that her daughter could ever hear her."
"You're probably right," B'Elanna agreed. "But my point is, the step from knowing that the four of us like to sleep in the same bedroom and assuming that we also have sex there is a small one."
"Does it matter if she thinks we do?" Seven countered. "We are her parents, and parents have sex. I think that it is actually more likely that she will assume, if she ever wants to think about her parents sex life, that sex is between the four of us. I think that Vasha would accept it as totally normal. Because of her link to the Hive she knows, or will know soon enough, that there are over five thousand species in the Collective that prefer to live together with three or more people. She will also know that over two third of those species also shares sexual intercourse between group members. To Vasha, her four mothers living together and going to the same bedroom is not any different than how species 3,385, or 6,584, or 9,393, or... or any of the other species live."
"I guess you got a point," B'Elanna admitted.
Seven moved to the open fireplace and sat down, looking at the flames. She knew B'Elanna would follow, and a few seconds later she smiled when B'Elanna sat down on the rug as well in a way that allowed for pulling the blonde close and then proceed to some serious cuddling.
Eventually Seven decided to continue the conversation. "But the fact remains that Pagsha and Katzi sleep in our bed almost every night. How do you feel about that? Or more to the point, how do you feel about the changes that them living with us have brought?"
"What do you mean?" B'Elanna asked confused.
"Like the fact that now that Pagsha and Katzi have moved in, they have their own bedroom, yet somehow end up sleeping in our bed most of the time. In fact, it can be argued that we now have three sets of sleeping arrangements in our quarters. Our bedroom has turned into the bedroom that is used for sleeping if the people sleeping there don't mind someone else sleeping beside them. Katzi and Pagsha's bedroom is used if one of the couples wants to spend the night alone with their Mate, like we also have done several times. We have our bedroom, yet we moved to their bedroom because we wanted to be alone for that night. And then we have the extra set of quarters for those times that we want to be alone for more than just the night."
"We don't just move to their bedroom if we want to be alone for the entire night," B'Elanna reminded. "What we needed to do, and what lucky enough came so easy that you can almost call it natural, is adapt. Take our goodnight kiss. Normally we did that in bed and then it would lead us. We would either go to sleep, or we showed how much we love each other. We still have that kiss, just that now I push you up against the wall between the two bedrooms and we kiss there. If the result of the kiss is that we leave it at the kiss, we go to bed in the same bed as our friends. If the kiss shows that we need more, we walk into the other door and join our friends in the sleep bed a little later that evening."
"That is true," Seven admitted. Then she smiled. "I think that it is a good thing that Pagsha and Katzi do not go to bed to sleep and then end up making love. Unlike us when they go to bed at night they know what they will do, and to what bedroom to go to if they want privacy."
B'Elanna chuckled. "Yeah at least we know when we have our goodnight kiss if their bedroom will be occupied or not. Of course, that's not counting the times where we and they don't mind company and we simply make love in that bed."
"Which only proves that just like us they too still have their occasions where they make love and want to be alone," Seven reminded. "If so they simply go to bed in their bedroom and we know that they won't come to our bedroom that night."
"That's the fun part about complex behavior," B'Elanna said with a grin. "If it just evolves instead of being planned it's so easy to keep to it."
"I think that it is only fair," Seven said. "While we still talk about 'our' and 'your' bedrooms to indicate which of the room we mean; 'your' being our bedroom if Pagsha or Katzi is talking, we have evolved to using the rooms equally. Just that the different bedrooms are now more assigned for a certain state of mind instead of who the person in the room is."
B'Elanna nodded. "You're right; fair is the right word. It's fair that now our bedroom belongs to them just as much. We invited Pagsha and Katzi to live in the Royal Quarters. They're part of this family now, and not just guests that are living here indefinitely. As such, I feel that they have the same rights to rooms like we do. Our bed is more than big enough for all of us to sleep in it; especially since both the couples have the tendency to move together. I normally wake up draped half over you, and Pagsha is always all over Katzi. We have the room in the bed, and when we go to sleep there, we're not in the need to be alone in the room."
B'Elanna smirked before adding, "Of course, there's the benefit that you and Katzi don't need to use the bathroom. Since you both sleep more to the inside of the bed it's not like I have to crawl all over you if I have to get up to go pee. I like the levels we now have. I think it even helps. If we sleep in our bedroom, all of us know that we don't have to worry if the others would like to be alone for that night. Because if they did want to be alone they'd be in the other bedroom. That way we can still do the talking and joking we do at night in bed before going to sleep. We know, for sure, that we're not bothering our friends, our family."
"You are correct," Seven agreed.
"So, if you could change anything about the situation we now have, anything at all, would you?" B'Elanna asked.
Seven thought for a moment, "No. I am glad that they are living in the Royal Quarters. I like having them around. They are great friends, wonderful to spend time with. They seem to feel exactly when those moments are where the two of us want to concentrate more on each other for a day, and they leave us alone even though being in the same Quarters."
"Just like we do for them," B'Elanna added. "We don't start gaping when they start to cuddle, or when Katzi starts acting like Pagsha is the center of her Universe. We simply leave them be and do stuff by ourselves. I think that what all four of us learned early on is that you don't have to be alone to be able to spend some quality time with your Mate. I can spend an hour or so treating you to quality time with more people being in the quarters, as long as we're left alone. Same for our friends. As long as we leave them alone while Pagsha is relishing being held by Katzi in strong and secure arms, assuring her how much she loves her, they don't need to be physically alone. I think that we have truly become that one family. The four of us have become as close as we can. I don't want to think about them no longer living with us."
"I do not think that we have to worry about that, our friends also like the situation as we have it now," Seven assured. "You can see it easily in how they behave around us. Before, Katzi may have been one of our best friends, yet she now lets us see things that we never did before. Like tenderly folding Pagsha in her arms and simply holding her for dear life to show how much she loves her."
"Hmm, not to be one to change the subject," B'Elanna said, feeling that the subject was well talked out for now, "But how about getting up and into that bed one more time?"
Seven laughed when seeing the wink that accompanied the suggestion. "Why bother moving to the bed?" A metal covered hand found a very sensitive spot and caressed it expertly.
B'Elanna leaned into the touch and closed in on her lover's welcome lips for a much needed kiss when a signal came over her Neural link that the Borg wanted to talk to her. Looking at Seven's eyes she could see the clear annoyance there and couldn't help but laugh. Clearly the Borg had contacted them both. Since they had a 'please don't disturb' mark set on their link they knew that it had to be important for the Hive to never the less contact them.
"Yes?" Seven said after opening the link to the Hive, and adding B'Elanna to it so that she too could interact if needed.
{Our Queen, cube 4,573 reports that the Federation Starship Voyager is under attack.}
{Estimated chance of destruction within the next five minutes is ninety-two percent.}
Seven and B'Elanna looked at each other for a moment before B'Elanna finally noted, "It's about time we let them know that we're alright anyway."
"You are correct," Seven agreed before addressing the Hive. "Send in the cube. Prevent the destruction of Voyager, and if force is needed to do so, only use non-lethal force if possible. Tell the Captain of cube 4,573 that if the attackers fit the criteria, the first stages of diplomatic contact can be established."
Despite the situation, B'Elanna grinned at that comment. "Yeah, just because they're attacking Voyager doesn't mean that they're the bad guys. Voyager does have a history of sticking their noses where they don't belong, and pissing people off in the process."
"It seems that our time here is over earlier then expected."
"Why?" B'Elanna countered. "The last we knew of their position, it'll take us hours at transwarp to get there. Let's contact Wolkav and tell him to set course to intercept, and we enjoy our time here a little longer, instead of leaving now and then just waiting until we reach Voyager."
Seven hesitated for a moment before agreeing that B'Elanna had a point. She contacted the captain of Unimatrix 01 to let him know that a new course had to be set, and after closing the link she moved closer to B'Elanna and said softly, "I think we had some unfinished business?"
~~~~~~~~~~{}~~~~~~~~~~
"Hey, had some fun?" Pagsha asked as B'Elanna and Seven walked into the living room from the kitchen, and as Pagsha knew straight from the attached holodeck. Seven and B'Elanna were only covered by an open hanging bathrobe; the only clothing they had bothered to wear when going to the holodeck to begin with. Sometimes it was easier to wear holographic clothing on a holodeck. Like the warm clothes they had used in the snow. They had no real clothing like that because they had not yet needed them in real life.
"Describe fun," B'Elanna countered, feeling even after as many times as they had seen each other nude by now, complimented by the fact that Pagsha's eyes took a moment to taken in the nudity that could be seen through the open bathrobes. Then before her friend could answer the rhetorical question, B'Elanna continued.
"Yeah, we had a lot of fun. Did some playing in the snow, did some loving in the snow... which was an interesting experience. Did some heavy talking, got a message that Voyager got into trouble again and that this time we did have to bail them out. All in all a fun day."
B'Elanna walked over to Katzi and took a moment to look at her friend who was lying on the couch, and at their daughter that lay sprawled all over Katzi's broad chest. They were playing some game of tag, where Katzi would hold up a hand and Vasha would slap at it, only to try again after Katzi moved the hand after a successful hit. "And what are you two up to?"
"I'm training our Princess here. You know? Fierce warrior stuff; hand/eye coordination, and all that."
"God, they really do start you Zamonan young, don't they?" B'Elanna laughed as she squatted beside the couch and addressed her daughter. "Hey young lady, having fun?"
Vasha looked at her and smiled. "Mamma! Mag says I great warrior be... What mean?"
B'Elanna smiled and caressed Vasha's cheek before placing a soft kiss on her head. "That means that Katzi will be the one that is as of now in charge of your physical and martial arts training, regardless of who is giving it. And that she's the one who'll have to suffer at some point through you being a teenager that thinks that she's so good that she can conquer the Universe."
"Oh," Vasha said before adding with a frown, "Mamma, what mean?"
"It means that your Mamma is teasing me," Katzi spoke up, "And that it will be my honor to teach the future Queen how to protect herself. But for now, it means that you and I will be playing even more games in the future."
Having heard the, to her, most important thing, the infant happily agreed. "Good."
"Is something wrong, since you said there was heavy talking going on?" Pagsha wondered.
"Nope, in fact, everything is alright," B'Elanna assured as she stood up and made room for her lover to greet their daughter as well. "We just discussed how much we liked you two living here."
B'Elanna shrugged before continuing. "You know how it is. We have absolutely no secrets from you, yet we need to be alone to talk about you and express how much we like the fact that you're part of the family now."
Pagsha laughed and waved a hand between herself and Katzi, indicating the both of them. "Been there, done that. And just for the record, we are also very happy to be part of the family."
Seven also took a moment to greet her daughter with a kiss to her forehead. Where B'Elanna had squatted beside the couch, Seven simply bent forward to kiss her daughter and then spent a moment to simply touch and caress her. In the mean time she explained. "We also talked about having the program we visited today saved and add a copy to it of the cabin on Zamonan, so that all of us can go there sometimes for a few hours on a day where we have nothing planned in the evening. Oh, and we talked about the fact that we have to keep in mind that Vasha will be Queen of the Borg and that we think it is better that as of today we no longer shield her with soundproofing. Well, we are not planning on removing the soundproofing around her room, but we mean in other places. Like Zamona or holodeck programs. We will explain it further tonight."
Katzi waved her off. "No need explaining. As far as I see it you finally came to your senses and will start raising her like children are raised on Zamona." She quickly glanced at her lover. "I'll explain it to you after dinner love."
Then the Zamonan looked back at Seven and added with a grin, "Unless you are planning to keep standing like that while I'll explain to my Mate. Then I'll be more than happy to explain in great detail and take a long time to do so."
Seven frowned, and then realized that because of her open bathrobe, Katzi had gotten a very interesting view when Seven bent forward to kiss her daughter.
"And you, my friend, are a pig," The blonde stated, but never the less bent forward to place another kiss on Vasha's head. "And I love you all the more for it."
Then she placed a kiss on Katzi's forehead, simply because she could. Slowly she stood before eventually pulling her bathrobe closed. "There, now how about you paying us back for that little treat I just gave you? You feel up to trying to creating those Zamonan dishes again?"
"You really want to suffer through that again? Last time I had the spices mix totally wrong; I'm no cook, and you know it. But thank you for the treat never the less. You look great in a bathrobe, my friend."
"It wasn't as good as replicator food is," B'Elanna honestly agreed. "And definitely not as good as the food in that Zamonan restaurant on deck 143. But it was also not so bad that we stopped eating it or had to force it down. I think that all you need is a little training. And if there's one thing you don't give up on, it's training. Hang in there, my friend. You'll get it eventually, and along the way we'll be your faithful test subjects. Unless you don't want to try and master those Zamonan dishes of course; that would be different."
"No, I want," Katzi assured as she got up and cradled Vasha in her strong arms. "It's..." She lowered her eyes before admitting, "It's just that I'm not that comfortable with you seeing me fail. All of you, even Pagsha, have seen me be good at things, and getting only better along the way as I trained them even more. You saw me fail the last time I tried to cook, and I didn't like it."
"We didn't see you fail," Pagsha disagreed. "We saw you cook Zamonan dishes from scratch, better than any of us would be able to. Now, it was not perfect, and you can get better at it, but that doesn't mean that you failed; it just means that you need more training." Pagsha smiled shyly before adding, "And you know how much I love to see you train, my Mate."
Katzi could only grin at those words. "Alright, some mediocre Zamonan food it is. Any preferences for a time?"
"How about now?" B'Elanna asked as she took Vasha from her friend. "We'll be meeting up with Voyager in a little over two hours. I have a feeling that we'll have to do some explaining to them, and that's best done in comfort around a table with food on it. I want some room in my stomach by that time to be able to nibble while talking. So either we have to eat now, or skip it. I rather not skip a meal with my family if I can prevent it."
"Yes, what about Voyager?" Pagsha asked, as they moved to the kitchen.
"They got into trouble again," Seven stated somewhat bluntly. "However, this time they were not able to outrun the people they had problems with. They were about to be destroyed, so I ordered the cube in to intervene. We will have to wait until we are there to hear the story from both sides, but it says enough that the cube initiated the first ties of diplomacy with the attackers."
Seven stopped speaking for a moment as she connected with the Hive. Then she snorted, one of the very few times she let herself do that. "Can you believe it? Voyager has managed to anger the Barudians."
"You got to be kidding," B'Elanna said in disbelief. She sat down in one of the chairs around the kitchen table before adding, "How the hell did they manage to piss off the only people in an entire sector who'd ask you if you are having a good time if they walked in on you fuc... pleasing their partner."
"Mamma, why you correct? I know what you want say," Vasha stated as she looked up at B'Elanna.
"Because I sometimes speak before I think, and I don't want my daughter to learn those words, and then think that it's alright to say them because her mother did," B'Elanna explained. Sometimes it was so easy to forget that their daughter had an IQ level much higher than her own. She might be innocent and inexperienced, but she was most definitely not stupid.
"I not use if you say I should not use," Vasha assured. "But trying to correct self is silly. You are part Klingon. Not use strong words is dis... disho... diononing what you are."
All four women felt a shiver run down their spine at Vasha's statement. It was a statement that was decades ahead of Vasha's biological age. But then again, as much as B'Elanna and Seven tried to ignore it most of the time, Vasha was more than just the result of mixing their genetic material. She was the result of mixing their genetic material and then nanoprobes shifting it all around to the highest possible state of perfection that could be achieved by mixing their DNA.
"And you, my wonderful daughter, will one day be an extraordinary wise Queen," B'Elanna finally said. "So you promise that you won't start using those words if you hear me say things like 'fuck'?"
"Promise," Vasha assured with a smile. "Love you Momma."
"And I love you. By the way, that word you tried to say is spoken as 'dishonoring', try it."
Vasha did so, and after four tries and four corrections, she managed it, even though she still had problems with the 'onor' part of the word.
As B'Elanna had been teaching Vasha how to say the word 'dishonor,' Katzi had placed several ingredients on the kitchen table. In the back of her mind, B'Elanna had noticed that this was different from the last time, where Katzi had done all the food preparations on the kitchen counter. But it was only when the Zamonan asked if she could hold Vasha that the meaning behind the change became clear.
"Um, sure, but won't she be in your way?" B'Elanna said as she handed her daughter to Katzi.
"No, she won't," Katzi assured as she placed the infant on her lap. She reached for one of the knives and than gave it to the infant to hold.
Seven and B'Elanna both wanted to object, but their friend's next words stopped them.
"In fact, Vasha will help me cut the vegetables and the meat, won't you, my little Sprite?" Then she looked back at her friends and addressed B'Elanna.
"You are right; they do start us Zamonan young. We never get told to not touch knives; we get told how to hold them. We never get told not to play with knives; we get told how to play with them and not get hurt. All of us respect the sharpness of a blade, but none of us fear it. I promise you that Vasha will grow up and be so used to blades that she'll feel naked if she isn't at least wearing one knife on her body. And once she's far enough in her training, the normal knife will be replaced by an Lawandoran assassin's blade; capable of slicing through anything, including the strongest body armor we know. I promise you, on my life, that Vasha's last line of defense, herself, will be a force to be reckoned with."
Seven looked at how the infant was looking at the sharp blade in her hand with great interest. She knew that Katzi was right; this too was something the next Queen needed to know. Seven closed her eyes, but couldn't stop the tears from falling. She took a moment to compose herself, glad that her Mate and her friends understood and let her be for the moment. Finally she opened her eyes and forced a smile to her lips when she saw how Vasha was holding onto the handle of the knife while Katzi guided it and did the real cutting. She reached across the table and placed her hand over the one of her daughter, stilling the knife in the process, and making Vasha look up.
"Promise me that you will do exactly what Katzi tells you when she lets you play with knives, alright?"
"Promise Momma," Vasha assured.
"So tell me more about this Voyager situation," Pagsha asked, mostly to distract Seven.
Seven looked at her and smiled in understanding, and thanks. "It seems that..."
Continued...