Author's Note: I guess since I suggested this "famous authors" rewrite of the "Night" scene between K and C in her quarters, I'd better offer my own version. My short scene requires a little backstory, however. I am taking beaucoup artistic license. And damn the chronology!So, here goes.?
Chakotay has already had his initial discussion with the captain in her quarters, to no avail. The scene below takes place in a kind of Round #2. Seems there has now been a mutiny of sorts on board. Nobody has enough to do. Everybody is bored silly. Days and nights run together. Irritation turns to hostility. And hostility is getting out of hand…
As is so typical of sailors in tempests or dead waters, the crew turns to a tried-and-true solution. Yup, human sacrifice. (You do remember Jonah, the Ancient Mariner, etc.). The Scapegoat Syndrome.
And who better to sacrifice than Harry Kim!!! Numerous other crew members of higher rank have long been snappish over the fact that young Engsign Kim gets to be a member of the senior crew. Further, he has shown unmitigated insolence by lallygagging in the BIG CHAIR. As if this usurpation weren't enough, he insists on playing atonal music on his clarinet, and misnaming the piece a "concerto" when it is clearly a "ditty." He deserves to die! And a group of nameless guys in red shirts, and a couple of Starfleet-suit-types who have spoken a line or two and are clearly marked for death now, decide to put themselves out of Harry Kim's misery. So, out the airlock he goes! Only his clarinet is left behind, evidence of his short and naive life.
How will Chakotay explain this to the captain, who is already on the thorazine rocks. Can she take anymore sadness, darkness, deep melancholy? Should he tell her the terrible truth or protect that edge of sanity she clings to?
This is a dark, dark episode. So, if you do not have the heart to continue, I will understand. But you can blame it on another author, really. I am just channeling for this illustrious writer…xxoo Annick
Once again he entered her sepulchral chambers. And still she stood in the semidark, a shade among shadows, silhouetted by the artificial light, where that small flicker of intelligence and drive yet within her seemed to gutter, and threaten extinction.
He had always thought her beautiful, in mind and body, she, the keeper of all their collective sanity, the preserver of their humanity. But now she languished, staring out at the void, her reflection, slight and diminished in the gloom, the only indication of life at all.
"Kathryn," he began. "I have brought you news, some sad intelligence, and a memento of the past." He waited, till the seconds filled the room, measuring the cadence of his thrumming heartbeat.
"What more could there be!" she cried out dolorously, her voice knifing through the increasing metaphysical darkness. "Have we not faced it all? Has not cruel Fate offered us hope, only to rescind the promise? Have I not made a deal with the devil? Risked out lives and well-being?"
He heard an anguished sob, saw her raise her fist in defiance, then drop her arm in capitulation.
How could he tell her now!
"But tell me, Commander. I am not so bowed down by my grief and dwindling strength of heart that I cannot but sustain another blow. Speak. Speak.
"It's Kim…" he said. And waited, as the blackness seemed to vitiate the little light extant, suck out the flicker of life and optimism.
"Yes, yes." She asked.
Unsure how to proceed, he burst out: " Mister Kim, he dead!"
"The horror! The horror!" Came her anguished response.
She stepped then into the half light. And Chakotay could see that she was not young. Or rather, not girlish anymore. The responsiblities of command had etched their record on her brow as surely as she had recorded any log of her own activities.
"An accident…" he lied, trying desperately to spare her, the weaker distaff side of humanity.
"She raised her hand, as if supplication, affirmation. "Tell me, Chakotay. You knew him best. You saw him last. Did he die as he lived?"
"Aye, Captain. In honor, and with a song on his lips to the last."
"A song, a song, a song," she sang out into the umbragiousness."
He handed her the clarinet then, and she took it, fingered each keyhole, removed the reed, held it up to her eye as if it were a spyglass on eternity.
"And this song," she continued. "You must tell me! What was this song? My very being depends on this knowledge…"
Again, he hesitated. He had seen this woman worn out with fighting the Borg. He had seen her sacrifice herself for the ship, time and time again. He had seen her indefatigable resilience in the face of death, contamination, and a really bad haircut! What right did he have now to disabuse her of her idyll. Of her belief in the loyalty of her crew. The inviolable sanctity of her chair. In the virtuosity of Kim's musical talent!!!
He wondered at the darkness of his own prevarication. And he was within a hair's breadth of telling her the truth. But what is truth!!! If it hurts and maims, if it shatters the tenuous resolve and the fibrillating heart! So he lied. To preserve and protect. Just like a park ranger.
"He died as he lived," Chakotay said again. "Serving his captain. You were ever on his mind. And the music of his soul poured forth, and with his last breath, he sang of you, of you, of you Kathryn Janeway!!!"
"I knew it. I knew it," she cried into the caliginosity of the room. With all my heart, with all my heart."
She paused, a brown study in all that blackness.
"Tell me, Chakotay. What was the song? Did it have a name as well as dedication? I must know. Something to hang onto in this Stygian ambience." He could not tell her. Would not tell her. That Kim's final notes on the clarinet had been a protest. Just a low, base protest against his sacrifice. In the moment of extremis, he had whistled out, "Hi ho, hi ho, out the airlock I go…"
Oh, moment of agony. His heart beat in his ears. Seemed to echo through the penumbra.
"Kathryn," he said softly, "It was his last dedication…and it was to you. …"
"Yes, yes," she said hopefully.
"The Janeway Concerto," he spoke into the tenebrosity, from the obtenebration of his own heart.
He needed to escape now, overcome as he was by his own journey into caliginosity. But she moved suddenly out of the shadow, and he saw the pellucid light of hope flare once more in her lovely eyes.
"Thank you, Chakotay," she said softly. She took his hands and pressed her cheek to his palm.
"I can go on. I will go on," she whispered, a radiance surrounding her being, even as Chakotay felt himself shrink and darken in the inky compromise of his integrity.
The author writes: I realize that the reference may be obscure to some, so a further explanation of the source of the parody go to Annick's explanation
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