BEST JANEWAY PAIRING
Title: CRUEL LIKE US
Author: Christinecgb ( c.giles@curtin.edu.au )
Web: http://appelsini.tripod.com/Christine/
Series: VOY (a/u)
Pairing Code: J/T
Rating: R
Archive: Sure
Summary: "The rehearsal is, of course, nothing like the actual event."
Acknowledgments: This is a companion piece to August's "Three Planets Left of Risa" told from the POV of B'Elanna which can be found at http://members.tripod.com/~Appelsini/index-71.html This universe is consistent with the one in that story.
This story is also written for Project S31 (http://www.oocities.org/project_s31/) and Round IV of the Femme Fuh-q Fest (http://www.oocities.org/femme_fuhq_fest/)
With thanks to Liz and August and Liz once more.
by Christine (CBG)
"Neelix is..." Her voice wavered off and she looked away, shielding her eyes from the sun.
"He was a friend to me when we first came back to Earth. A help."
"He cares about you a lot, B'Elanna."
"He's different from you and me, you know. Of course you know."
"B'Elanna..."
"He doesn't have cruelty in him."
"No," she replies, returning the gaze.
"Not the way we -- not the way we know it."
- August "Three Planets Left of Risa"
------------
In my head, I rehearse. I greet her, she greets me. Formal. We use titles. She asks me what I'm doing and my answer is patient and articulate. I've never been either.
Later, I'm reminded that communication is contextual, not cerebral. The rehearsal is, of course, nothing like the actual event.
And yet I rehearse once more as I watch her cross the grounds, thinking I will tell her that she looks well. Thinking that I will smile enigmatically when she asks how I am going.
I notice she's walking slowly. She's walking like she has nowhere to go and I know she hasn't. I know so much about her now. None of it surprised me.
And I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to learn something about her that shocked me or scared me so I could justify this betrayal - if it really is that. But it's only after reading her file that I realise she doesn't shock me at all. She never did.
I learnt things that did shock me. Back in the Maquis, Chakotay visited a brothel on Orion 4. His reasons for visiting were never revealed conclusively, but the young men who worked there offered testimonies to Starfleet that were potentially scandalous.
Harry fell in with a crowd at the Academy, who experimented with anti-aging theta radiation treatments. There was no evidence of his participation, but he was certainly aware of their extra curricular activities. When questioned, he said they were his friends.
Tom's record had been opened for scrutiny long before he found himself on Voyager, but I found it curious to see that he had refused visits from his entire family during his stay at the Penitentiary in New Zealand. He refused visits from everyone except Kathryn Janeway.
*
The other thing I note about her is the lack of uniform. She's an Admiral on Starfleet grounds without a uniform. Perhaps she thinks she is less conspicuous this way.
In lighter moments I think about being in bed with her, being naked with her. Even without the uniform, without anything at all, it is difficult not to notice her strength and how she can be frightening and inspiring at the same time.
I remember looking out across a room full of uniforms on my wedding day and seeing her. She was smiling at me, she was smiling at us both, and she looked as though she might cry. I thought about how she said, only moments before, "Stick with him B'Elanna, you're all he's got." And I wondered whether she told him the same thing about me.
*
Chakotay told me he hated her over Raktajino in the Lecturers' Lounge at the Academy. He said it as though he didn't expect me to understand, as though he had to justify hating this woman when the rest of us placed her on such a pedestal. Chakotay always assumed he had inside knowledge about Kathryn Janeway. It wasn't the first time she misled him, but he was wrong in thinking she persecuted him.
"She wanted me to love her so long as I never expected anything in return," he said. He had trouble keeping the bitterness from his voice but I could tell he wanted to sound as though he had placed his feelings in the past. I wondered whether he'd visited the brothels on Orion Four since he got home.
"It's no excuse," I told him. "And it's not fair."
"You don't know, B'Elanna."
"I know enough. Whatever you think she did to you, you've no right to air your grievances on the newsfeeds."
He scowled and looked at the occupants at the next table, who had been casting quick looks in our direction.
"She's a hero, Chakotay," I told him. "You shouldn't forget that."
"It's not really an option is it?" He turned to glare at the table staring at us. They instantly looked away.
*
I can count the number of times on one hand. And sometimes I do. I remember each time individually and in great detail. I'm amazed at the way things that didn't make sense then, come together in retrospect. When we got back, the counselors told us about Prisoner of War syndrome, how it gave us the strength to do things that we wouldn't do under normal circumstances. I asked them what this meant for my marriage, and they quickly revised their opinion, telling me how stabilising my relationship with Tom had been.
I never told them that I thought they were right.
Harry said that she was more than human at times, and it's that image of her that wages war with the one where she and I are intimate.
*
I follow her. I watch the strollers and joggers part to let her by. At the Academy they called that a 'commanding presence'. She didn't need to be famous for people to step out of her way.
She is putting a hand to her head, brushing the hair from her face. I think of the time she parted the hair on my neck to reveal bruising from the Cardassian holoprogram. She ran a dermal regenerator over the bruise. She told me she was in a Cardassian prison once, and that they had tortured her. She said she found the alliance with Cardassia unnerving at best, and it wasn't a lecture - just a way to tell me she understood, or that she'd try.
She said she knew what it was like to want to feel pain in order to feel alive. Later I bit her skin and she moaned, moving her body against my mouth, reveling in the promise of more to come.
But when she touched me, she touched carefully as though I might tear. She chose that for me, perhaps hoping I wouldn't need like she needed. Sometimes I'm grateful.
*
She gets close and I call out to her.
She calls me 'Captain'. It feels strange and ill fitting coming from her. I feel like a usurper, the pauper in the king's clothing.
The meeting is brief and the conversation isn't forced. We don't talk about Neelix. Not in the way we should. I kiss her cheek before I go. I think of an old human religion, of Judas, betraying his friend with a kiss on the cheek. And then there's a tale in Klingon folklore about two lovers from warring houses who meet the night before battle. They leave each other's arms only to take up swords against each other the next day.
It makes me think that perhaps these wrongs are inevitable.
When I head back to HQ, I think about Neelix. He visited us a great deal after Gregor was born. I remember one night when he took Miral outside to look at the stars. She asked him to indicate the position of Talax in the night sky. He pointed and said, "See that cluster of stars up there? Well, you just fly straight through the middle and keep going until you reach Talax."
Later I told him that we wouldn't be facing the Delta Quadrant until at least six in the morning. He laughed.
"But it's out there, isn't it?" he said, and he gestured with a wide sweep of his hand.
I knew then he would leave, but he'd always come back to us - to her.
*
Later, they ask me for an assessment. I don't know what they're looking for, and they don't tell me so I say that the Admiral appears to be in good health and not suffering from any noticeable mental stress.
Manek is in charge of my project group. She nods thoughtfully when I tell her this.
"The Admiral is an unknown element," she says.
"I don't think you have anything to worry about."
"Is that opinion or sentiment?"
When I think about our return, there are things that never really connect. The attention they showered me with, the pardons and the invitations that never sat comfortably with me. I expected resistance from all sides.
"Why did you come for me?" I ask.
"Excuse me?"
"Section 31 - why me?"
Manek laughs. "I would have thought that was obvious. Your engineering and scientific skill, your experience in covert operations. You weren't the first Maquis asked you know."
"You never asked Chakotay."
"Too loyal."
"To whom?"
She throws me a pointed look.
"Is that why I'm here?"
"Because you're disloyal?"
I shake my head. "Because of Captain Janeway."
Manek smiles. "B'Elanna, do you really think she's that important to us?"
"Is she?"
Manek leans back into her chair. "Command was very keen to get you on board B'Elanna." Her voice is low and serious. "And I think you could do great work here."
I watch Manek's chair rock slightly from the shift in her weight. The back of her chair is high, like a throne. Not like a captain's chair.
"Will that be all?" I say.
"We're done," she says, and I leave her there in her small throne.
*
There was, one last time that makes me think I could be wrong about everything. I was pregnant and I noticed how she found it difficult to touch me.
"You don't want this?" I asked her.
"It's not that..." she said.
"Then...?"
Her eyes fell to my belly. "You're leaving me," she said and she smiled a little.
I lifted my hand to my stomach and stroked it lightly. You can't leave a place you never were.
"No...," I said, and I ran my hand along the inside of her thigh until it came to rest just at the top of her leg.
"You will." She whispered as she caught her breath and I moved my fingers further so that they slid inside her. I remember that I liked to see her come saying my name.
Later she asked me if I'd tell Tom if he asked.
"No."
"You'd lie?"
"I can do that. Is that a problem?"
"No," she said. "You do what you have to. It's just...I wonder what you'd tell people, if they ask."
"Who's going to ask?"
"Someone will."
And someone did. We'd been back just over a year. Tom had decided it was time to have another child, and after some convincing I agreed. I went through job after job and motherhood seemed to be something I did with consistency. We had one beautiful child. It was difficult to argue against another.
They found me teaching at the Academy. I was approached by a man young enough to be one of my students. I don't know what made me go with him, why I trusted him, why I cared. I knew I needed something different. Something that was as far from Starfleet as it was from the Maquis. And maybe I'd become used to change.
They asked me in an interview. They said it was just a formality and I had nothing to fear from any revelation I might offer them but the truth was I'd gone past pretending.
"How would you describe your relationship with Kathryn Janeway?"
The question itself did not surprise me. It was my answer that came as a shock.
"I loved her..."
She once told me she thought we would all be difficult to get past. She said it and laughed as if to say 'look at the sentimental old Captain' but I knew she was scared it was true. Scared that she'd be lingering on our memories long after we'd forgotten her.
"We all did."
Fin
