A BEGINNING, A MIDDLE, AND A PROPER END
The Journey (con'd)
[one] [three] [four] [five] [six]
"Basics"
KOLOPAK: He is your son, Chakotay. And he is a child of our people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Dalby to Chakotay. We've finished in Hogan's quarters, sir."
"Thanks for letting me know. Chakotay out. Permission to leave the bridge, Captain?"
"Of course, Commander. In fact, I'll come with you--I've got a few things to take care of below. The bridge is yours, Mr. Paris."
The steady hum of the turbolift sounded a good bit louder, Janeway reflected, when the person riding in it with you didn't say a word. "You don't have to do this yourself, Chakotay."
"Yes, I do." He said nothing more, and she did not press him.
When the doors to Hogan's quarters slid open, Janeway's eyes widened. "I see that Mr. Hogan was a pack rat," she said softly. At least a dozen boxes were stacked on the antigrav.
"He lost more than most of us when I sent my crew over to Voyager with just the clothes on their backs." Chakotay's voice was bitter, his expression closed and dark. He made a note in the computer that the quarters were available, then guided the antigrav out the door. Janeway stuck with him, knowing perfectly well that he would rather be alone but also that he would not be so rude as to say so.
"I hope someone kept his guitar and music," she ventured when they were back in the lift, heading for the storage room that held the personal effects of those shipmates they had lost. How long before that room was filled?
"Henley said she was going to. I expect we'll hear some of his songs at the next concert." The expectation clearly gave him pain.
"I'm glad. I don't mean it will be easy--but it's good when someone's voice can still be heard after he's gone."
"He wouldn't be gone if it weren't for me. Hogan, Williams, the others--" His hands worked at the handle of the antigrav.
"I thought you'd been too quiet lately." He had shared in the general euphoria of rescue and victory, but euphoria had--inevitably for him--given way to guilt. "This wasn't your fault--"
"Wasn't it? And Suder, too, after he'd already given up what peace he'd achieved to save the crew from an error I made. I'm just lucky we weren't stuck on Hanon IV long enough for everybody to get over the shock and start thinking--"
"Chakotay--"
"I knew Seska. I knew what she was capable of. I should have known it couldn't be anything but a trap. I never should have risked it. And then to learn the baby isn't even mine--! You should have let me go alone--"
"Don't be ridiculous. You wouldn't let another crewman take a chance like that--"
"No, I'd have told him he was a fool and confined him to quarters!"
She had never quite realized that he could be just as hard on himself as he could be on her, and she found an ironic humor in knowing how he felt to be on the receiving end of his own reproach. "Computer, halt turbolift." He sighed and braced for a lecture, and she let him have one. "I see. It's my fault for letting you make up your own mind."
"Of course not," he said quickly. "I meant that with anybody else I'd have been more objective, more able to see what was in front of me. But I let my judgment be clouded by--by tribal sentiment, or paternal pride--"
"Or maybe," she countered, "by my desire to come out of our dealings with Seska and the Kazon with something positive--I practically twisted your arm. I didn't want you to have to live with the knowledge that you'd rejected your child, and I didn't want to live with the knowledge that I'd let you."
"We're never really responsible for another's actions, remember? The decision was mine, and the price was too high."
"To try to save an innocent child? I disagree. And remember, you did save the life of that native, and all our lives by proving to them that we meant them no harm."
"But we never should have been there! And speaking of the natives, there's the little matter of the irreparable damage to their culture. They saw a starship--"
"And they'll probably tell stories about it that might even turn into myth. Chakotay, was it really so awful that the Sky Spirits traveled from the Delta Quadrant and forever altered the lives of your ancestors?"
He was aghast. "How can you say that, when you're so devoted to the Prime Directive?"
"Because there's not a damn thing we can do about it, and you'd better learn to accept that. Look--" She'd never had much patience with second-guessing; you do the best you can at the time and then live with the consequences. "Seska's plan to take the ship worked. It would have worked wherever and whenever she tried it, because she was playing our strings very, very well. How predictably we responded to that distress call! The baby was almost irrelevant." Her slight smile was rueful. "I'll bet she was a formidable Maquis."
"She was." As the days passed, his reluctant but genuine sorrow over Seska's death was gradually giving way to vast relief. They would battle other enemies in their long journey, but none who knew them so well, who could so effectively exploit their weaknesses, and their strengths.
"Well, it happened, and we've survived it. With losses, yes--but losses unfortunately come with this job, and sometimes those losses are because mistakes are made. Anybody on this ship is capable of making a mistake that can cost a life. Pointing fingers of blame, even at yourself, doesn't solve anything, doesn't bring anyone back." She stepped closer and looked him in the eye. "Don't do it. I need you focused and alert. I need you to let this go. I need you to have as much confidence in your judgment as I have. Understand?"
His chin came up, and he nodded. "Yes, Captain." But he spoke without conviction, his eyes lacking their usual light.
She clasped his arm briefly. "I don't envy you, Chakotay. I don't know how you're going to cope with this. But I know you have to. And I know you will."
At last he mustered a faint smile. "Yes, Captain." She gave him an approving nod and started the lift again. After a few decks had passed them by, he added, "Thanks."
"You're welcome," she replied in her usual brisk tone--but the day was well advanced before her favorite of Hogan's melodies stopped running through her mind.
********************
"Sacred Ground"
JANEWAY: . . . I imagine if we scratched deep enough we'd find a scientific basis for most religious doctrine.
CHAKOTAY: I remember when my mother taught me about the science underlying the vision quest. In a way I felt disappointed--some of the mystery was gone. Maybe the Nechani have chosen not to lose the mystery.
...
JANEWAY: . . . I didn't come here for personal enlightenment. I'm trying to save a member of my crew.
...
OLD MAN #2: If you can explain everything, what's left to believe in?
...
CHAKOTAY: Captain--I don't understand this.
JANEWAY: Neither do I. That's the challenge.
...
DOCTOR: Captain? If there's something about my analysis you disagree with--
JANEWAY: It's a perfectly sound explanation, Doctor. Very--scientific.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Captain? Are you all right?"
Janeway started, and came back to herself to find Chakotay staring at her with concern that wouldn't need much of a nudge to turn it into alarm. "I'm sorry, Commander--I'm a little vague today. What did you want to see me about?"
"It can wait. You shouldn't even be here, you know. You were kept awake for over three days--you should go to sleep for at least half that long."
"I'm fine, really. I'm just--wrestling with something."
"I see. I used to wrestle in high school--can I help?"
"You did? Were you any good?"
He shrugged. "I won a few and lost a few. I'm still a pretty good boxer, though."
"I do seem to remember hearing about a little altercation in the mess a while back. I hope you haven't had to administer that sort of discipline lately."
"That was the last time, in fact--so I'm long overdue for a fight. What can I hit for you?"
"Three old people in a locked room."
He chuckled. "I don't think it's allowed to punch the ancestral spirits in the nose."
"Too bad." She patted the sofa and he joined her, and she poured him a cup of coffee. "I got personal enlightenment after all, and I don't like it. I don't like that I was their pawn, and I like even less that they were more concerned with enlightening me than with saving Kes's life."
"Nobody ever said that any given bunch of spirits has to be benevolent--or even comprehensible."
"But are they really spirits? You said that maybe the Nechani have chosen to keep the mystery. If you choose to hold on to mystery, aren't you denying the reality? The science?"
He thought a minute. "But your experience in the shrine wasn't quite the same as a Nechani's would be. You took a leap of faith and got a scientific explanation for it. Isn't that having your cake and eating it too?"
"But having your cake and eating it too is impossible."
"So--no matter what had happened you wouldn't be satisfied with it." His lips pursed with amusement. "You're a contrary."
"I'm a what?"
"Something my father said long ago--that he always knew the spirits had chosen me to be a contrary."
"He got that right." She sipped her coffee and waited for him to stop laughing. "You know, you had to take a leap of faith before I could take mine. You had to have faith in my judgment." She pressed her fingers a moment against his hand. "Thanks."
He shrugged and said lightly, "It's my job. I'll admit, though, it isn't usually quite so unsettling."
She gave him an apologetic smile and sipped from her mug, quiet and thoughtful but apparently content to have him there, and he was content to remain, enjoying her philosophical mood, her teasing, her touch, but all the while wondering when he would again have to summon that degree of faith, when he would next have to watch her take another such risk, or a worse one. It pleased him to see her draw up her knees and brace her boots against the edge of the table, pressing her body deeper into the sofa as if she planned to stay there a while rather than hurry back to her desk.
"I wish I could reconcile my personal experience with the larger objective picture," she mused. "I feel as if I touched mystery, opened myself to--I don't know--a new level of being--and then had it snatched away by a--a trio of omnipotent practical jokers. How did you maintain your beliefs when your mother burst the mystical bubble of the vision quest?"
"For a long time I didn't. But then I realized that not all the mystery was lost. What is an animal guide really? Is it our subconscious, or a manifestation of energy, or an actual connection with the natural world? What's happening to our minds during a vision quest, and why do biochemical changes caused by physical stress induce it? Why, if it's nothing more than biochemistry, is there a sense of a spiritual journey, an awakening, at the end of it? In the same way, there are still a lot of questions about the Nechani. Who set up the biogenic field? How is it maintained? Who are, or were, the spirits? Why is personal enlightenment more important to them than the life of the person seeking it? Do they really have the power of life and death? And it's possible that not all the answers are pleasant. Most cultures have stories about capricious or vindictive gods--maybe there's more truth in them than we think. And in the end, you know, what you went through wasn't meaningless, because you did save Kes. There's an absolute for you."
"You're right. And isn't it typical of me to want all the answers right now. Whatever they are, the spirits forced me to admit that I was driven to succeed--and for that instant I felt it was the worst character flaw a person could possess. I got very defensive about it. I wonder if given the luxury I'd be less driven after this experience."
"It doesn't take much luxury to be less driven." She looked skeptical. "Give yourself ten minutes for lunch instead of five. Spend a little more time in the holodeck. Take a walk--and not to Engineering--in the woods, a meadow, the mountains."
"A walk in a meadow--with bluebells and buttercups--" She sighed. "That sounds lovely."
"Join me? It's almost lunchtime. Neelix can make us a picnic." Bluebells and buttercups. He knew just which program to choose.
"You don't think I'll accept, do you? Well, mister, you're on. I can enjoy a picnic lunch as much as the next person."
His eyebrows lifted saucily. "Prove it."
She finished her coffee in one gulp and sprang to her feet. "I will. And just wait 'til you see how well I can fly a kite!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"A-koo-chee-moya. We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers and from the bones of our people. I seek the wisdom of my animal guide. It's been a long time since we met, and I hope you haven't been offended by my silence. I ask that you help me to understand what I've experienced, to understand how, and if, mystery and science can coexist. Barring that, help me to accept that I cannot always understand--"
********************
"Future's End"
JANEWAY: I don't know what my relatives were doing this far back in history--
ROLLERBLADER: Coming through--sorry--
JANEWAY: For all I know, she could be my great, great, great--great grandmother!
CHAKOTAY: She does have your legs.
********************
"The Q and the Grey"
CHAKOTAY: I was wondering just what you meant when you said he made a personal request.
JANEWAY: He wants to mate with me.
CHAKOTAY: I see. . . . I know I don't have any right to feel this way, but--this bothers the hell out of me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Come in."
"Here are the results of the diagnostics, Captain. Every system checks out, and we're back on course at warp six as you ordered."
"Thank you, Commander." Janeway cast her eye over the padd Chakotay handed her. "One thing you can say about Q--he usually puts things back the way they were before he started playing tricks. Well--sometimes. What about the human systems? How are the crew reacting to their trip into the Continuum?"
"A few people seem a little jittery, but it's nothing serious."
"Q will do that to you. Limitless power combined with limitless mischief. God, he tires me out. I'll bet he taught those nasty Nechani spirits everything they know. I've been reading your report--you handled Madame Q very well. Why don't you have the courtesy to look tired?"
"Sorry, Captain. Just trying to impress you."
She gave him a mock glare over her coffee mug. "Well, stop it."
He chuckled softly. "Yes, ma'am."
She dropped her gaze back to the padd, but knew that he didn't leave. "Was there something else, Commander?" she asked, without looking up.
She heard the rustle of fabric as he folded his arms across his chest. "You're going to make me ask what happened, aren't you?"
She set the padd aside and propped her chin on her hand, smiling sweetly at his annoyance. "It's the captain's privilege to embarrass her first officer."
His expression turned smug. "Is that so? Well, it's the first officer's privilege not to let her." He turned on his heel and headed for the door.
It was also the captain's privilege, of course, not to let her first officer have the last word. "Let's just say," she addressed his back, and he turned, "that the human male doesn't have anything to worry about."
He blanched on cue. "Kathryn--" he began, and quickly recrossed the room, but then he saw her puckish grin and gave a sigh of irritation.
Honor satisfied, Janeway was prepared to be merciful. She came around to the front of the desk, gesturing with her mug. "Don't worry, Chakotay--I'm not about to produce the first human-Q hybrid--though it is fascinating to speculate what such a hybrid would be like, isn't it? No, I was invited to witness the, um, cosmically (or was it comically?) historic occasion, and you'd better believe I did. It was over in about five seconds, and if Q thinks that would be enough for me--I'm almost tempted to teach him a lesson he'll never forget."
Her rant subsided when she noticed that Chakotay was staring resolutely at the floor, his body taut and motionless, and for a disorienting instant she could not have said whether the sudden thrumming silence lasted a second or an hour.
"More than you wanted to know," she said, in a voice not much above a whisper. Would they suffer these unexpected electric jolts for the next seventy years?
He loosed a pent-up breath. "You could say that." He shifted his weight and the tension began visibly to ease from his back and shoulders.
"I'm sorry." Sorry I couldn't let go then as quickly as you did, sorry we didn't meet in another life, sorry you can't take solace in duty the way I can, sorry it doesn't hurt me as much as it hurts you.
He met her gaze steadily and smiled, and she reflected that it was not only in battle that he demonstrated his extraordinary courage. "Well. I'd better go check on Paris's driving."
"Perhaps you'd better. Thank you, Commander."
When the doors had closed behind him, she stepped over to the viewport and looked out at the stars.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Attention all hands. This is Security Chief Tuvok. There is a representative of the Q Continuum on board ship. To our knowledge we are not at present in any danger, but should you experience anything at all out of the ordinary, inform Security at once. Tuvok out."
In the captain's ready room, Tuvok and four of his finest had taken up stations throughout the room. "Not that it's going to do much good if there's trouble," Janeway remarked, "but I appreciate the thought, Tuvok."
"Captain, we must not discount the possibility that this Q is as yet less powerful than the others we have met, and that we might therefore have a chance of controlling him should his power begin to manifest itself."
"Or he could be worse--power without self-discipline."
"I have seen little evidence that the Q with whom we are most familiar exercises what I would call self-discipline, the term suggesting to a logical mind a certain consistency, or at least an aspiration to it, in the regulation of behavior. Q might exercise occasional self-control, but only when he is in the mood to do so."
"All right, I'll grant you that. But surely this Q means us no harm--yet, at any rate. Look at that face, Tuvok!"
Tuvok obeyed, and frowned even more severely than usual.
"I never thought I'd see you dandling a baby Q on your knee, Captain." Chakotay was armed and ready to defend, but on the whole he was reassured by Janeway's trust in Q's promise that his chubby-cheeked infant son would behave himself during his visit.
"I never thought Q was serious about my babysitting. 'Auntie Kathy' indeed. I'll give him 'Auntie Kathy.' Five minutes after the deed was done a four-month-old baby Q appeared in my ready room with his doting father. Something tells me Mamma Q didn't suffer much morning sickness, much less the slightest labor pain."
"I guess there ought to be some compensations for the shortcomings of Q-style mating."
"I guess so. Well, Q had better not make this a regular occurrence without being prepared to offer me some compensation."
"Like what?" His tone was casual, innocent, for he generally didn't tease her openly in the presence of others, but the look in his eyes was pure imp. He was most definitely in a very naughty mood.
"Oh, I don't know. My parents used to let me skip a few chores if I watched my sister without any complaints, but I can't really skip any chores here, can I?"
"You're skipping them now," he pointed out. "Maybe you should consider the break from duty your 'compensation.'"
"Don't you dare give him any ideas when he gets back. What am I supposed to do with a baby whose cry might split an atom, or whose spit bubbles might blow comets off course?"
Chakotay leaned closer to their young guest. "Hear that, kid? No spit bubbles allowed." Baby Q gurgled at him.
In a tone more arid than the most desiccated Vulcan desert, Tuvok said, "Security team, be on the alert for--spit bubbles." Ensign Poltos plucked a napkin from Janeway's coffee tray and stood poised to apply it if necessary.
"We'll just have to trust Q to clean up his son's messes--like any responsible parent, eh, Tuvok?" Chakotay said.
"Perhaps you can find it in yourself to trust Q, Commander, but I cannot. And a responsible parent teaches the child to clean up his own messes."
"At least he seems to be a happy baby," Janeway put in, "--but I do hope Q won't ask me again. And I really hope he isn't serious about considering me this child's godmother. He's a sweetheart now, but what will he be like when he's teething, or during the terrible twos?"
"I submit that by that time, given the personality traits of his parents, this child's tantrums will be only just beginning."
"Could be. So maybe we'd better save our strength. Tuvok, I really don't think we're going to have a problem here. Q said he'd be back in an hour."
"I will remind you that time holds no significance for him, and that consequently you might find yourself guardian of the infant Q for rather longer than you expect. But--as you wish, Captain." He ushered his team out the door, Poltos returning the napkin neatly to the tray before she followed.
"Personally, I'm just waiting to see you change Q diapers."
Janeway narrowed her eyes at her first officer. "So it's payback time, is it, Commander?"
"Yep," he replied cheerfully, whereupon she deposited Baby Q in his lap. "What do you think Q would do if I gave the kid a tattoo?" He set the baby on his shoulders, hoping it was safe to get Q drool in his hair. "Too bad we can't put him and Naomi into a sandbox together. Spit bubbles at two paces."
Janeway laughed. "Good heavens, that might destroy this entire sector! It would be something for Samantha to try to explain that to Naomi when she's older, wouldn't it?--that when she was a baby she played with a god, or the nearest thing to it we'll ever consort with."
Chakotay's black eyebrow did an accurate imitation of Tuvok's. "'Consort?'"
"You know what I mean. I wish we could risk letting them play together. Naomi's never played with a real child. She must think she's the only baby in the world who's allowed outside the holodeck."
"She's certainly taken over the mess hall." Naomi Wildman, thanks to her Ktarian heritage, was growing quickly and beginning to toddle about, though she was just five months old. Her godfather Neelix had all but adopted her, and whenever she was with him in the mess hall, everyone there helped to keep her out of trouble, tempting her with the blocks or stuffed animals that could usually be found in corners or under tables. "Do you still think you should apologize to Naomi? She's going to have some amazing experiences out here. Ow!" Q had grabbed a fistful of his hair.
"So she is. Samantha didn't intend for her child to be an experiment in behavioral psychology, but that's what she is. We'll just have to see how things develop." Greatly amused, she watched him trying to return Baby Q to his lap without sacrificing a square inch of his scalp. "You're very patient with him."
"Strictly self-preservation--I don't want to make him mad. Get him off me, will you? He's your godson, after all. --Thanks. Do I still have all my hair?"
"Your raven tresses are intact."
Happily rescued, he poured himself a cup of coffee. He marveled continually, and with thanks, that he and Kathryn had been able to recapture so much friendship, so much affection, so much fun--far more than he had ever allowed himself to hope for. There were bitter moments, to be sure, moments when something she said, or perhaps an expression on her face or a certain movement of her body, would catch him by surprise and the ache would stab through him, as sharply as though it was only yesterday that they'd donned their uniforms again and exchanged that last bleak look in front of the home they had shared. But those moments were few enough now that he could recover from them fairly quickly, and demonstrate his regard for her without risking her comfort or his own hard-won acceptance.
He propped an arm on the back of the couch, and looked at her. He was always glad to have an excuse to look at her. "You seem very comfortable with him."
"Oh, I'm good with babies and I'm good with fresh-faced Academy graduates, but I don't know how well I'd handle the years in between. What about you? Family and ancestry are very important to you."
"True, but it's hardly fair to a child to want him primarily as an entry in a genealogical table. The child should come first, his place in the tribe second. At least that's how I'll approach it, if I ever get the chance."
"Have you spent much time around children?"
"I saw my niece and nephew every couple of months when I was in Starfleet, but hardly at all after I joined the Maquis. They probably don't remember me now."
"I'm sure your sister won't ever let them forget you. When you see them again they'll know you so well they'll be able to pick you out from a crowd."
"Not if I'm ninety-seven they won't. Any kids in your family?"
"My sister's two girls. They're smart and moody and demanding and skeptical and stubborn."
He smiled and deliberately took the bait. "They sound like someone I know."
She smirked in triumph. "They're budding scientists, too, and I like them tremendously. Poor Maureen doesn't understand why she couldn't produce at least one artist like herself!"
"Maybe you'll produce the artists and then you and she can trade children."
"Talk about an experiment!" She laughed, and stroked the fine hair of the child in her lap. Spit bubbles had indeed appeared, but did not seem to threaten imminent cataclysm. Softly she added, "I may have to settle for being Aunt Kathryn to a whole shipload of children."
He did not touch her, but his gaze was so warm and sympathetic that it seemed to her as if he had. "You know, it's been over two years, and we've had only one wedding and one birth."
"You're saying we aren't making much progress toward our generational ship."
"You said once that you couldn't order people not to have children. You might have to order them to do the opposite."
"Oh, no--"
"I'm afraid so. Procreation duty, in two-hour shifts. No exceptions." The imp gleamed again in his eyes. "The captain should lead by example, after all."
"Oh, you're incorrigible! But two whole hours--? You're a man of hidden talents, Commander."
He grinned and let Baby Q chew on his fingers.
********************
"Coda"
CHAKOTAY: Don't you die on me now. Come on, Kathryn--breathe!
...
JANEWAY: Come on, Chakotay! I cheated death. That's worth a celebration, don't you think? A bottle of champagne, a moonlight sail on Lake George-- How does that sound?
CHAKOTAY: Like something worth living for.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The lake was so still that the sailboat's hull cleaved through the moon's sparkling reflection with barely a sound. The friendly lights of the small marina, nestled among the silhouetted contours of forested hills, receded into the distance--though faint notes of music drifted to them across the water, mingled with the occasional plop of a fish and the soft hoots of owls near the shoreline.
Having demonstrated her expertise by piloting them manually into a slow current that moved past the rustling grasses of a marsh, Janeway set the automatic sail controls while Chakotay poured the champagne.
"Is this the real thing?"
"As real as replication can make it. Did you think I'd celebrate with anything less?"
"Then I'd better go easy, or I might say something I'll regret later." He was already half-drunk on her joy.
"You should regret half of what you say as a matter of principle."
He laughed. "Well, here's something I won't regret." He lifted his glass. "May I tell you how lovely you look this evening?" She was young and carefree in white linen and sandals, her arms and shoulders bare in the balmy night. Tucked into the sash of her dress was the peach-colored rose he had given her; the moonlight made spun gold of her hair. He could not take his eyes from her, and was thankful the darkness would conceal that his smile was not quite that of just a friend.
"You certainly may." She leaned back against the pillows, holding her champagne flute in one hand and twirling the rose in the other. "And you look very handsome yourself. I remember that shirt from the luau--blue is a good color for you. And speaking of the luau, Chakotay, I've been thinking about the next--" she paused for effect "--Talent Night."
He groaned. "Please, not Talent Night again--"
"No, really. You were doing pretty well on that little guitar Neelix had--a ukah-la-la-lo, or something like that. You could learn a song."
"Why don't I just do a rain dance?"
Her face lit up. "Can you?"
"No, thank goodness, or I'd never hear the end of it, would I?"
"Hmm. Well, if you won't sing and you won't dance-- I know--juggling!"
She knew her chatter was an attempt to keep dark thoughts at bay, those insistent and probing reflections not only on the nature of the entity that had tried to sap her will to live but also on what its manipulations had shown her of herself. She had intended this outing to be a lighthearted celebration of life, and it was--but Chakotay had in a way shared that chilling experience with her, and she found that in his company she could not entirely escape the memory of it. Her teasing became forced, and gradually faded away.
He watched her trail her fingers in the cool water. "A penny for your thoughts."
"A penny--is that all?"
He patted his pockets. "I'm fresh out of--of--I can't remember what the other coins were called--but I'm sure your thoughts are worth a sackful of them."
"In fact, no bribe will be necessary." She gripped his hand a moment, and then released it. "Thank you for bringing me back. I wasn't ready to go just yet." Her chest had borne deep bruises from his desperate efforts to keep her alive until the Doctor could reach her.
"I wasn't ready to let you." His arms and shoulders still ached, but he would take no drug to speed their recovery, would cling to those small hurts as long as he could as a reminder of his profound gratitude that he had been granted the power to save her. Her skin had been translucent, her lips so cold-- "Please don't ever do that to me again."
She flinched, shaken that her subconscious could so accurately have predicted what he would say. He must have seen something in her face, for he tensed and made as if to set his glass aside so that he might move nearer to her. She said quickly, "You must have decided you don't want to be captain after all." In the dim light she couldn't read the expression in his deep-set eyes, but his smile looked unsteady. "Do you know how disconcerting it is to think that my subconscious spends its time imagining how the crew would feel if I died?" How you would feel-- "The alien had to be pulling those images from somewhere-- Speculating about the eulogies at my own memorial service--! I can't decide if it's a symptom of some psychological disorder, some unrecognized death wish, or worse--or merely insufferable conceit."
He sat back against the other bank of pillows. "It sounds like perfectly natural curiosity to me. Don't we all wonder what people really think of us, what they'd say about us if they knew we'd never hear it?"
"Maybe so--"
"I hope you imagined an eloquent eulogy from me."
"You didn't give one. Coward."
When their shared laughter had subsided he took her hand loosely in his. "Your subconscious knew I wouldn't be able to."
They sat for a time without speaking, arms resting on the pillows, listening to the lazy creaking of hull and boom and ropes, relaxing to the slight rocking of the boat. His hand tugged a little at hers, and she turned to see that he had settled deeper into the pillows, his head thrown back so that his face was bathed in moonlight. His eyes were closed but his breathing was not so slow or even that it suggested sleep; he had simply surrendered to the night, to the moment. She had not told him, and she would never tell him, what she had imagined of his raw grief when in her hallucinations he could not save her. Nor did she allow herself to consider her apparent assumptions about his feelings for her. She wondered when the day would come that she could safely expend less energy avoiding examining her personal relationship with her first officer, and, with a sudden and confusing wrench of her heart, whether she really wanted it to.
"Thank you for this, Kathryn. I've never been sailing before. A lot of canoeing and rowing, but no sailing. We'll have to do this again sometime, especially if you promise to do all the work."
Smiling, he had turned to face her, but had not let go of her hand, apparently at ease with companionable physical contact for as long as she wanted to maintain it. His hands were more weathered and callused than those of the average starship pilot, more accustomed to manual labor; reared by a tribe who spurned much of modern technology, he had learned to build and to create the hard way, with old-fashioned craftsmanship and muscle. He continued that tradition even surrounded by the technology he had embraced, etching the symbols of his tribe in stone by hand. She wondered whether he'd ever finished the large piece he'd begun on New Earth--
She slipped her hand from his and reached for more champagne. "Mark and I go sailing whenever we can. In fact, this is one of our favorite places."
The mournful cry of a loon echoed across the water.
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"Unity"
CHAKOTAY: It was incredible. . . . I heard all of you--your thoughts inside my head, as if they were my thoughts. And I could see myself through your eyes.
RILEY: Then you must have caught me staring.
CHAKOTAY: . . . You like bluebonnets. . . . I know so much about you.
RILEY: We shared a very rare experience. . . . Can you still hear what I'm thinking?
CHAKOTAY: Yes.
RILEY: Then you know I want to be closer to you . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JANEWAY: Helping others, Chakotay--that's part of who you are. Given everything you believe in, I don't see how you could have behaved differently.
CHAKOTAY: But I couldn't have been more wrong about them, could I?
JANEWAY: I don't know. . . . [S]o far they haven't acted like typical Borg. They saved us from that cube, and they let you go.
CHAKOTAY: But they didn't hesitate to impose their collective will on me when it served their interest--did they?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Her primary emotion was relief, an absurd and no doubt petty relief that Riley Frazier had turned out to be less than the paragon he had believed her to be--relief that he would now leave her behind without the slightest regret, with, in fact, a definite relief of his own.
They had been lovers, she was certain of it. She knew him so very well; she knew--oh yes, she knew--how he looked at a woman he cared for but had to let go. But beyond that, the connection between them was almost palpable, almost, she thought, like ours. No, not quite like theirs, not quite--rational. He had seemed a little dazed during their conversation, and had watched Riley walk out of the briefing room like a man bewitched, so that she'd felt the need to break that connection by interposing herself between him and the door through which Riley had passed.
She was also relieved to know that he had never considered staying behind. She knew it had not been a casual liaison--not that she believed him incapable of such; it had been clear to her early on that he was not unfamiliar with the sort of establishment Tom Paris had created in Sandrine's--but neither was it serious enough to compel him to abandon his ship and his crew--and his captain. How could he not feel something for her, for all of them? They'd saved his life; for that blessing even she was deeply grateful to them, even now. And the mental link had to be very alluring, almost overpowering; she admitted to some curiosity about it herself. But all those complex feelings had not been sufficient to sway him, and she recognized within herself a feeling not unlike triumph that that should be so.
Was it jealousy? She didn't think so. If he'd had no right to be perturbed by Q's proposition to her, then she had no right to feel hurt or betrayed upon learning that he'd found with someone else a measure of what he couldn't have with her. She knew as well as he did that they had no emotional claim on each other--not, at any rate, the claim of lovers. She made demands of him, in fact, that she would never make of a romantic partner; that's the way it was between captain and first officer. And she had come to depend on him in a way she would never depend on a lover, had come to assume his presence and his allegiance far more completely than she had in those early days, when she'd wondered idly whether he and B'Elanna might become a couple. Though she suspected that if he were to become seriously involved with someone he would balance his private and his professional lives rather better than she had ever managed to do, it was inevitable that his attention would be turned a little away from her. She would never lose him as a loyal officer and devoted friend, but she would in that event lose him as an almost constant companion--and that was another reason to be relieved that Riley Frazier had harbored her own agenda.
Fleeting though it had been, however, his relationship with Riley forced her to acknowledge, in a way she had not truly acknowledged or perhaps even understood before, that someday he would move on; and she thought, though the thought gave her pain, that perhaps she should try to prepare herself to let him go.
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