A BEGINNING, A MIDDLE, AND A PROPER END

Reconnecting

Janeway had just curled up in her armchair with a cup of tea and a volume of Denillian sonnets when the comm signal chirped. "Bridge to Janeway."

She fantasized briefly about drawing and quartering Harry Kim. "This had better be good, Lieutenant."

"I'm sorry to bother you, Captain, but there's a call for you from Commander--um, Captain Chakotay."

"Really?" She scrambled out of the chair and over to her computer screen. "That counts. Put him through, Harry. --Chakotay! What a nice surprise!"

"Hello to you, too. By my calculations it's about 2200 shipboard time, and I thought I might catch you taking a few minutes off." He was lounging back in his desk chair, in one hand the tea mug she had given him for his birthday a few years before.

"A half-hour earlier and you wouldn't have."

"Busy day? You look beat."

"Picking up the pieces after a plasma storm--and there were a lot of pieces. But there aren't any injuries worse than a sprained ankle, so I've got no complaints." She added with a certain caution, "How are you?"

He managed a smile and a shrug. "Hanging in there."

"I'm so sorry about you and Seven."

"She said she'd told you. I'm glad I didn't have to."

"I wanted to call, but I wasn't sure I should--it's really none of my business."

"Don't say that--of course it is. You're a good friend to both of us."

"Good friends know better than to butt in."

"You wouldn't have been butting in--just showing honest concern. And we're both okay--really. Seven's even started ballet classes--I convinced her it was an efficient form of exercise." His smile faded quickly. "Ours isn't the only shipboard romance that didn't survive homecoming."

"That seems an inadequate description of what you and Seven had."

"Well, it was a romance, and it was aboard a ship--"

His half-hearted attempt at humor only made her more sad. "Yours is the only breakup that surprised me."

"Did it? We keep saying everything's different now that we're back home. Seven and I were good together on Voyager. But we only had a month--and a very busy month at that. We weren't even used to each other yet when we started our lives here, with a whole new set of distractions and responsibilities and complications-- On board ship, in a familiar, comfortable environment, we might have made it, but here--it just didn't work. You know as well as I do that relationships can be altered by a change in circumstances."

"Not if they're strong enough--"

"That's exactly my point. Relationships can't be stable if the people in them aren't. When we left Voyager, Seven lost not only a familiar environment but also the two people she depended on most to help her restore and develop her humanity--you and the Doctor. Without that support, that guidance--"

"But she had you."

"She wouldn't turn to me for that. She didn't want me to be a 'crutch,' she said, and she's right--one partner shouldn't be an emotional crutch for the other. But what that meant was that it was hard for her to find a balance between the personal and the professional in an environment she didn't yet understand. And I wasn't much help--Earth was less home to me than Voyager was, and I was more on edge than I'd been since I joined the Maquis. I couldn't help Seven adjust because I wasn't adjusting very well myself."

"Then she'll learn on her own. And she'll come back."

"I don't know. She's adapting pretty quickly to life without me." Though he tried to conceal it, she knew him well enough to hear the ache in his quiet voice. "On the other hand, maybe she's just outgrown me."

"Outgrown you? Outgrown you? You're the most together person I've ever known!"

He nearly choked on a mouthful of tea. "'Together'? You've seen Tom Paris lately."

"I had dinner with him and B'Elanna last week, in fact. They're doing some test flights from DS3 and we managed to meet up. It shows in the vocabulary, hmm?"

"It does. And I appreciate the compliment. But what I meant was that it's possible Seven's outgrown what I can give her."

"You've thought about this a lot."

His shoulders moved in a slight shrug. "I wanted to understand what happened, why we couldn't talk to each other anymore. So I brooded for a while."

"You never struck me as the brooding sort."

"I wasn't very good at it. But my animal guide and I had some productive conversations."

"No bitterness?"

He smiled at her echo of their recent conversation. "Of course not. A certain wistfulness--sure. But I don't want to hold her back, or confuse her at a difficult time."

She regarded him with fond incredulity. "You have got to be one of the most understanding people who ever lived."

"Actually--I think I might have been too critical, too impatient. Seven's the perfectionist to end all perfectionists, you know."

"Interpersonal relationships don't generally lend themselves to perfection." She propped her folded arms on the edge of her desk. "Look--I know it's a very bad idea to have an opinion of any kind about a friend's--personal life, but--"

He smiled. "You have my permission to butt in." He rested his chin on his hand and prepared to be diverted.

"Well--Seven and I have talked, a little at the reunion and a little more since then, and--while she didn't get very specific, and I wouldn't betray her confidence if she had--I have the feeling that maybe you had to understand too much, that you were as much a mentor as a--lover--" He was truly listening now. "You're very giving, very generous, and people like you get taken advantage of. I should know--I took advantage of you for seven years." Learning the depth and complex nature of his regard for her had only emboldened her, made her all the more demanding of his unquestioning obedience, all the more irate when he refused to oblige.

"It's the captain's prerogative," he countered mildly, and smiled at her wry grimace. "But Seven wouldn't--"

"Not consciously, no. But she fought so hard for her individuality--maybe deep down she's afraid that romantic involvement inevitably means losing that fight. So you were the one who had to keep the romance alive. And when a relationship is unequal--sometimes it falls apart."

He pondered a while, obviously self-conscious but not so much so that he rejected her analysis out of hand. His gaze was directed to one side, away from the video pickup; she wished she could put names to all the emotions that passed across his face. At last he said, "No wonder we did so well without a counselor."

Her smile contained more than a little relief that he didn't feel she'd butted in too far. "You and Neelix did your share."

"Well--we tried. Neelix, in fact, was the only one who ever asked me for romantic advice, and look how that turned out." His wry smile didn't last long. "It was when I felt closest to Seven that she always seemed to draw back."

"There might have been a bit of father-figure in the mix, too, and children always have to break away."

That at last was too much. "Now wait a minute--Counselor--"

"On her part, not yours--I'm not accusing you of robbing a maturation chamber. But even though in some ways she seems to possess the knowledge of the ages, Seven is younger emotionally than her chronological years."

After a moment's thought, he conceded her point with a nod. "If you're right, she probably has outgrown me." He cocked his head curiously. "You've been thinking about this, too."

"I guess I wanted to understand what happened. I thought I--we--had saved her for you, and when it didn't work out--I don't know--I felt somehow responsible."

"I don't think the responsibility of a captain for her crew extends to their love lives. Besides, you did save her, and what we had together was very special. I'm deeply moved to have been able to play such a role in her life."

Janeway sighed. "I knew you'd be good for Seven. But I never stopped to wonder whether she would be good for you. I remember saying to you things like 'Seven will need your help,' and 'Seven depends on you'-- I never told Seven to take care of you. I guess you never seemed to me a person who needed to be taken care of--you're so self-sufficient."

"It's possible to be self-sufficient without being a hermit, you know."

Her mouth fell open in mock astonishment. "It is??"

He laughed. "Honest Injun."

"Oh, you're awful! If you hadn't left when you did your tribe would have kicked you out. Anyway--" She grew serious again, and he matched his mood to hers. "--it's also possible to be involved without being dependent, but I'm not sure Seven is mature enough yet to separate the two. And a relationship shouldn't be based on need."

"If ours was, what did I need from her?"

She hesitated before she answered in a voice rich with sympathy. "Someone to love."

"Then I got what I needed," he said softly, "for a while. If only that need could have grown into a true understanding."

"Have you ever known that level of understanding?"

He considered a moment before he answered. "Never to the extent that I believe is possible--though I might have come close once." For an instant he looked surprised, as if he hadn't known what he was going to say until he heard the words. In the next instant he was regarding her with a sudden, startling intensity, and she realized that their companionable, confessional mood had changed. Very quietly he said, "We never talked about New Earth."

Surely if their fingertips were to touch their screens at the same time they would feel the heat of each other's skin. She sat back, folded arms tight across her breast. "No. We didn't."

He did not move, but his was the stillness of tension, not tranquility. She had never seen this particular expression on his face. How had they stumbled onto this ancient, agonizing topic? Agonizing because he was right: he had come close--they had--but duty and responsibility carried a price, the price of lost opportunities, of commitments beyond oneself. And now it was much, much too late.

"Anyway," he was saying, "I did try to throw Seven out the cargo bay on our first acquaintance. Maybe it was a sign." The time to talk about New Earth was long past. Why he had brought it up now he could not have said, and Kathryn's prolonged silence and bleak countenance made him regret very much that he had.

She wrenched herself out of memory. "I don't think she ever held it against you."

"I'm lucky with women that way. They forgive me anything--even a certain timidity--"

"I never said you were timid!" At his gleeful chortle she rolled her eyes. "You always said we'd laugh about our--disagreements--someday."

His eyebrows rose at her extreme understatement. And then he said very seriously, "I hoped we would. I hoped we'd get home safely and have fewer opportunities to--disagree. I'm glad some wishes come true." He leaned forward to refill his mug, and then sat back again. "Your turn. Are you seeing anyone now?"

"There have been--a couple of abortive attempts." Interesting, professional men who were admiring and curious, but unable to fathom why in the worlds she'd want to get back into space after seven years of being trapped there--unable to fathom the complete package called Kathryn Janeway. "Actually I'm thinking about letting Michael Sullivan out of his holographic Irish mothballs."

"That bad?"

"Mm-hmm."

He grinned and took a sip of his tea. "Does he have a sister?"

********************

Continue

Home