I don't like this story because this is Mosaic's Kathryn Janeway, not mine. The real Kathryn Janeway (the one from first season) has enough strength and self-possession that she wouldn't chicken out the way she does here--she wouldn't reveal herself to Chakotay via a gimmick, she'd go talk to him instead. I miss the character who dealt with turmoil by working through it, not by isolating herself and hiding from it. Nonetheless, this fits into canon quite neatly between "Worst Case Scenario" and "Scorpion." I finished the story for Gigi Knell, whose story "Ideal Life" should be required reading for everybody at Paramount, which owns everything in here.

Feedback to emwycedee@writeme.com.

LAST WORDS

by YCD

My door buzzes very late, dragging me from bed, though not from dreams--I've been having trouble sleeping these past weeks, since Kathryn's near-death in the shuttle accident and my link with the Borg. Two mistakes, both my responsibility. She's said she doesn't blame me for either, but I'm troubled, and frustrated--I feel like, if I could just manage to string together a few real triumphs, a few correct decisions, she would take me into her confidence. I don't dare hope for more, not now, despite how close we came on New Earth. I blew it, with the Maquis, with Seska, with the Kazon, with Riley, and if she's not ready to trust me, I'm willing to wait, accept the blame for my past actions and concentrate on my job.

"Captain," I say to her, blurrily, because I can't imagine she's here as Kathryn at this hour--this can't be a social call. But she's out of uniform, and her eyes look bloodshot. Wordlessly she holds out a hand, I take it, and something presses into my palm. A computer chip. My fingers close over it as she withdraws, stepping back toward the door.

"I wanted you to have this, I thought you should see what's on it. Probably I shouldn't have brought it now, I know it's late. Don't stay up watching it tonight, OK? It's nothing pressing."

"Kathryn..." I try to halt her while she steps back and the door swishes open. "You're obviously upset. What is it?"

She turns, averting her face from my gaze. "My last orders," she admits. "I thought they needed updating, and...I had trouble finishing them. Like I said, it's nothing pressing. Goodnight, Chakotay."

It's a struggle for me not to go after her, and beg her to tell me what's gotten her so distressed that she had to get me up at this hour. I know her well enough to realize that she must be embarrassed by her visible emotions; whatever's on that computer chip has to be pretty damn important to her, or she wouldn't have come at all.

She's a perfectionist, and stubborn, controlling, qualities I value in a commanding officer and even in a friend--she forces me to meet her standards, emulate her values. At times I think her unreasonable, expecting me and herself both to live under regulations no human beings could survive for years on end. But always her instincts turn out to be correct. She's made few choices I can fault her for. And the few I disagreed with--the antagonism of the Trabe and the execution of Tuvix--I blame myself for not speaking my mind, not trusting her to listen. If she's not ready to give me her absolute faith and reliance, if she doesn't want to reveal her spirit to me--if can't let herself love me--the fault lies as much in myself as in her.

After taking a moment to calm myself down and be certain she won't return, I move to my terminal and insert the data chip. She appears on my screen, looking disheveled as she did a few moments earlier--worse, even, she has tears on her face and one hand smoothing her damp hair into place. "Chakotay," she begins hoarsely. "I've been trying to come up with a functional set of last orders for the past four hours. After my experience with that alien who almost killed me, it seemed important to update the message I recorded a couple of months after you became my second in command. But I can't seem to be able to do it. I decided I should at least show you my attempts, so that maybe you would understand why I'm having so much trouble. And...I realized I should show them to you now. While I'm alive. Because these aren't the sort of things you should hear only in a postmortem recording. But, if you're not comfortable seeing them, I understand, and I don't want you to feel obligated to respond to them. It's your choice."

The screen goes blank, waiting for my input to proceed.

I sit slowly in my desk chair, steepling my fingers in front of me so I can lower my head to touch them, willing calm. I know that my first instinct--to go to her quarters and beg her to say to my face whatever it is she tried to tell me on the chip--is far too dangerous; she's taken enough of a risk exposing herself, even this way, even if she's hiding behind the formula of her last orders. She's always been cautious when it comes to talking about her feelings. I remember how disturbed she was on New Earth when my attraction to her became obvious--so disturbed that she ran away from me until she was ready to deal with me on her own terms, with her own limitations. Parameters, she called them. She's still defining them in our relationship. Yet whatever is on the chip evidently has stirred powerful emotions, something she needs to tell me, yet wants to distance herself from.

Do I want to know? The real question is whether I can live with what I might learn. Obviously, she thinks I can, or she never would have given me the chip. In fact, she must think I needed to hear whatever's on it, even though it makes her uncomfortable to let me. This is a leap of trust on her part. That's enough for me.

"Computer, play the rest of the message."

Kathryn's face appears on my screen again. She's in uniform, hair sternly pulled back; she looks businesslike, a little tense, as she often does when she has to carry out an unpleasant but necessary task.

"Chakotay. If you're watching this, then I have to assume that you are now in command of Voyager and I am no longer with you." Her eyes are a little glassy, as if she were reciting a speech rather than talking to me. "I'll keep this brief, and remind you that I think you'll make an excellent Starfleet Captain. It's been a real joy for me to work with you and come to the realization that, regardless of the circumstances of our collaboration, you are one of the finest officers I've..."

She stops suddenly, shaking her head, not looking at the screen. "This is bullshit," she mutters, half to herself. "Chakotay." She stares straight into the screen, and I lean forward as if the eye contact were real. "If you're watching this, it means that I'm unexpectedly dead, and you've probably spent the past who knows how many hours or even days trying to remedy that fact. I imagine you're exhausted, and in shock, and privately concerned about whether the crew will accept you in my place. There's no doubt in my mind that they will."

Her head tilts to the side, one brow raised emphatically, and her professional smile falls into place...the one with which she greets diplomats and issues pep talks. "I'm sure things look bleak right now, but once you've recovered from the suddenness of the change, I expect life on Voyager to go on just as it always has. I don't want you to grieve for me, though I know that might be difficult at the moment, but I want you to put me behind you and remember that I've always..."

The screen abruptly goes dark, in the middle of the phrase, as if she'd cut herself off at some later point and erased what came after those words. I watch a sequence of filing codes flicker across my computer terminal: apparently she'd deleted the entries I just watched, then restored them later, putting them back into chronological order. When her image comes back, she looks different; she's facing sideways, one hand cupping her chin, and her expression is not the confident, direct address of my commanding officer. She's turned into Kathryn again.

"Chakotay, if you're watching this, then I'm never going to see you again, so there are some things I want to tell you," she begins, still not looking at the screen. "I lived through this moment already once, from the other side, after you revived me during that shuttle crash, where an alien life form took control of my thoughts. He made me watch my own death, and my own funeral. I took it for granted that you would be devastated, no matter what sort of face you put on for the crew. I also remember that I had a hard time dealing with that, even though I was dead and you couldn't see me--I felt guilty, and responsible, because I'd left you alone, with so much unfinished business. I guess--maybe it would be cruel to try to sort through all that now, when I'm not coming back."

She looks into the screen, biting her lower lip, eyes filled with uncharacteristic uncertainty. "I know there are things I've never let us discuss, even though you've wanted to. We both knew a day could come like this one. That makes a certain amount of distance essential, and it's for the best if you don't try to second-guess what might have been."

I sit with my face in icy hands while she remains silent, opening and closing her mouth as if she can't decide what to say. "If we'd stayed on New Earth," she adds finally, "things might have been different. They were changing when Voyager came back to get us...but I'm not sure what purpose it would serve to play might-have beens. Though, I suppose, if I'm not coming back, I owe it to you to tell you how I felt, since I couldn't before." Another long pause. "But these are my last orders as your captain, and I want to emphasize what that role means, now that it's yours. I haven't been able to explore every aspect of my personal feelings while this ship remained my primary obligation. Of course, you may make different decisions for yourself in this role. I'm not sure how to advise you there, because with the prospect of a long command ahead of you, it might be better if you kept the bonds you've formed with members of this crew. This position is isolating, and I'm not sure how I would have managed it without you..."

She looks down, blinking, then slams her finger onto a button in front of her, and my screen goes dark again. I pause the computer before the next part of the message can play. I walk across my quarters, running shaking fingers through my hair, which is damp with perspiration. I'm not sure whether I can bear to hear what comes next--whichever way it goes.

The last time she spoke this openly with me was the night after she almost died. I came very close to telling her how I felt about her--spurred on by the horrible possibility that she might actually die before I said the words--I was afraid she might never know, or she might doubt it after I was gone. The idea of doing something irreversible was balanced out by the knowledge that such a confession probably wasn't something she wanted to hear. When I thought I was losing her, the only thing in the universe I wanted was to have her alive; in between counting chest compressions and begging her to stay with me, I made a private, one-sided deal with whatever higher power might be listening, that if her life were spared, I would demand nothing else, I would be content merely to sit beside her on the bridge and share her burdens, I would never push for anything more. I should have known better than to think I could keep that vow for seventy years, but at that moment, I meant it with all my might.

We talked a little on the boat after she revived--one of the most joyous nights I've spent on Voyager. Certainly the happiest I've been since New Earth. When she took my flower and invited me to go sailing, my impulse was to throw my arms around her and swing her exuberantly in a circle around the ready room; if she hadn't been two steps ahead of me, already bounding for the door, I might even have done it. But the mood turned sober once we set the champagne aside, and started talking about what we'd each experienced on the planet. I assumed that she'd remember nothing--not the CPR, certainly not me clinging to her, sobbing.

What a shock to learn that she witnessed it all, though she believed the alien had implanted those images in her mind. "I'm a little embarrassed at how susceptible I was. " She shook her head ruefully, not looking at me. "You were very emotional--in tears, even. I tried to touch you, and my hand went right through your shoulder. The alien had you talking to my body, promising to get me back...and I bought right into it, he spun a whole scenario about the entire crew refusing to believe I was dead and trying to retrieve me, before everyone finally gave me up for dead. If it weren't me you were pursuing, I would have thought you all looked a little ridiculous denying it for so long. I should have known it wasn't real."

I couldn't answer at first, too scared to admit the truth. She thought she'd constructed the events in her subconscious, and she did not want to relive those moments--nor did she want to ask me to relive them, she seemed to appreciate how horrific the whole situation had been for me, trying to revive her with the ship out of range, believing I might lose her. But as she revealed her deep disturbance at how the alien had violated her psyche, all the while pretending to be her father--and when I realized that she thought my own emotions were figments of her imagination, rather than fact--I knew I owed her the truth.

"Captain," I began, hoping she would hear her name in the tone of my voice, the way the syllables ran off my tongue, the setting was too intimate for me to risk using it right then. "Most of what you told me you saw on the planet really happened. From the time I started trying to revive you...you were in shock, I carried you out of the shuttle, I couldn't find cordrazine in the medkit so I started cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I pretty much ordered you to start breathing." She cracked a small grin. "At one point you did, so I stopped CPR long enough to inject you with a tri-ox compound. But when I started to take tricorder readings of your head injury, I realized that something was wrong--I guess it was the alien trying to control your brain, but I couldn't tell that. You stopped breathing again. I begged you not to die on me, I was scared out of my wits, and at one point I thought I'd lost you--I was exhausted, you had no pulse and you weren't breathing, I didn't know what to do. I was really crying. You didn't imagine that part."

She looked at me, uncomfortable, but needing to know the truth. "Did you...pick me up?" she asked.

"Yes. I wanted to keep...it's an old superstition, I guess I was hoping that if I refused to let go of you, I could hold on to you somehow. Finally I started to put you down, right as the ship hailed. I told them I had an emergency, and that you were dead. Tuvok came on a shuttle with the Doctor right away, though he wasn't certain it was safe, with the storm activity. Even though you weren't breathing, the Doctor was picking up brain activity--he knew you were struggling for your life. He administered some sort of stimulant and Tuvok took tricorder readings--all I could do was beg you to hang on, to fight it."

"Well, it worked. I heard your voice, while the alien still had control of me. It was why I realized that I wasn't really dead, and his 'reality' was false. I remember you saying my name over and over." She fell silent, absorbing the fact that everything the alien had shown her concerning my behavior had been true. I wondered whether the burden of my grief added to her own disorientation.

"The alien wouldn't have shown me what you felt unless he thought it would further his plan to make me come with me," she added finally, pensive. "I wanted to tell you that I was there--to prove I wasn't dead. I was frustrated that you were suffering needlessly over me. I was...moved, too, but that was secondary to the frustration. Then seeing my father--I remember when he died, until the last moment I was so sure that I could save him. And he--I mean, the alien--he made me relive that, only this time it was you trying to save me, and now I feel like I learned nothing from my father's death...I expected you to replay that same pattern with me, refusing to let go..."

We talked about denial being a normal stage of grief, and she told me the story of how she'd lost her father and fiance--she'd mentioned him before, on New Earth when we were comparing notes on our experiences in Starfleet, but I had no idea that she'd been present at his death, nor that she'd blamed herself for it. She cried a little, and I told her about my own father's death, then the discussion turned to the fact that we had both lost our fathers as a result of the Federation's relations with Cardassia. We exchanged war stories, and pondered the irony of the fact that we'd met on opposite sides of the conflict...all without judgement of one another's choices. It was the closest I ever came to admitting that the Maquis cause might not have been worth the full-scale war which would surely have erupted if the Federation had retaken the Demilitarized Zone, and the closest I ever heard her come to admitting that Starfleet's refusal to defend former Federation colonies in the zone might have been morally wrong.

I left the holodeck feeling very close to her, understood in a way I had never been by another person. Not that we agreed on everything--probably we never will. But she listened, and she was willing to take the time to see from my perspective, though it required her to question Starfleet and her own principles. It's rare for her to acknowledge my disagreement on an emotional level--she's not always so willing to back off from what she believes to be the proper course, even if the entire command crew disagrees.

In the days after, I thought a great deal about what it would mean for me to lose Kathryn Janeway. We both know that either of us could die at any time by the other's order. Perhaps it's impossible to negotiate a deeper relationship than we already share, given that knowledge; if she were my lover as well as my captain, my best friend, the only person who ever understood me--my t'hy'la, to borrow a term from the Vulcan, expressing the inexpressible in my own language--I don't think I could survive her loss. I know I would never be able to issue a command that would risk her life, even if it were necessary for the survival of the ship. I'm not certain whether she would be able to do the same to me, either--she's refused to do so twice already when letting me go would have been the most logical course of action. The sacrifice of physical love seems trivial next to the bond of responsibility we share.

Or at least I told myself so, before Riley Frasier and the Borg. I don't consider mind control any excuse for what I did. For the sex, maybe--though that was the least of my sins, under the circumstances. I tool Riley's demands to Kathryn, I asked Riley to come with us...that was unforgivable, and the ease with which Kathryn dismissed it troubles me. She must have known everything which transpired in the mind link--I told the Doctor what I'd done, and the Doctor surely reported to the captain. Yet she forgave me. Or else it didn't matter to her if I took solace in another woman.

Did she want me to find somebody else, to free her from guilt or responsibility towards me? Or does she simply not care for me with the depth of feeling I hold for her? That possibility is almost too painful to bear...and it's the primary reason I stop myself from going to her, right now. If my need to confess my love is entirely selfish, or one-sided, I can't bear to know. Spending every day with her, separated by a couple of meters from what I want most yet can never possess, I depend on the illusion that if only circumstances were different, she would be mine. Just as I'm hers.

I return to the viewer, struggling to think what might have compelled her to come to me this night. It's been a crazy couple of weeks--we almost lost the ship twice to powerful aliens, but were spared first by a stranger's great personal sacrifice, then by our own ingenuity. Oddly enough, that hasn't seemed to faze Kathryn--she's gotten tougher since the Kazon took Voyager, more certain than ever that we're destined to get home, and she's not going to let any menace get in the way of that.

Ironically, I wonder whether her emotional state stems from something much less threatening: the holographic program that she dismissed as a harmless, morale-boosting diversion, which is the function it served for most of the crew. I ran it several times, both before and after I told her of its existence. The scenario disturbed me a lot more than I let on. Seeing myself as a traitor, and recognizing the depth of Tuvok's contempt for me as Seska's ally and lover, was disconcerting--but watching myself kill Kathryn in three different variations of the preposterous scenario was far more painful than I cared to admit. Who knows what sort of effect it might have had on her: the underlying suggestion that she might be unpopular with the crew, Tuvok's lack of faith in her command and his own office...the thought of her first officer not as a close ally and friend, but an opportunist who only pays lip service to the ideals she lives by?

She knows better, yet something drove her this night to rethink her last orders, then come to me impulsively with this fragmented confessional. Perhaps it's the knowledge that we're fast approaching Borg space and a probable day of reckoning. Maybe she was stiflingly bored, or lonely...it's possible that she went poking around in the computer and stumbled across my own final message to her, in which I said the words I can't say to her tonight. That was a difficult decision--to let her know after my death, when the admission might cause her more guilt and grief than comfort. And speaking aloud made the feeling so real, even if I was only speaking to her image on my computer screen rather than to a live woman. The message is encoded, but not on privacy lockout from the captain; she could access it if she wanted to. Probably I was half-hoping when I recorded it that she'd choose to view it while I'm alive, when it still might make a difference. I almost went to her to tell the truth on the evening I recorded it, shortly after our rescue from Hanan IV. Because it seemed terribly unfair to make such a statement only after it was too late...

That's almost exactly what she said herself, at the beginning of this message chip.

I sit down hard in my desk chair. "Computer...resume," I whisper.

A small whir, and Kathryn appears on my screen once more. Out of uniform. With her hair down. "Chakotay." Her fingers touch the screen as her face twists with emotion. "I know this isn't what you were expecting to see in my last message to you, but I wanted to make certain that you wouldn't misconstrue this as your captain speaking. This isn't something Captain Janeway could ever say to you, but I had to--I never said it to you when I had the chance before, because I thought we had all the time in the world, and when I found out that we didn't, I was your captain again."

Her chest heaves as she takes a deep breath. "Right now I feel terribly alone, and that isn't something I would ever wish on you. So I want you to know--whatever happened to me, whatever happens to you--you were never alone, and you never will be if I have any say in it. If there had been some way...I would have told you, or I would have shown you...I couldn't. I know you understand. You've always let it be my decision, and stood by me anyway. I wish...I wish there could have been some other way." I watch her lips twist, straining for control. "I'm sorry I could never give you more than that. But I can't tell you how much it has meant to me that you've always been here, from the day we found ourselves on this mission, and if there's any way I can, I'll stay with you even after I'm dead, just the way I told that alien I would. You won't be alone. Take care, Chakotay, and godspeed."

The screen goes dark.

It takes me several minutes, face in hands, to begin to catalogue my own responses. It's unlike her to resort to a device like a data chip to communicate with me--she has enough strength and self-possession that if she wants to say something, she usually does so directly. I always assumed that, if she ever admitted that she had feelings for me, the confession would immediately be followed with, "And here are the two dozen reasons we are never going to act on those feelings." Perhaps that's why she would never let herself think in those terms.

Is there any way I can ever tell her how I feel--give her the words without also giving her responsibility, pressure, guilt? Probably not. Maybe that's what she was trying to tell me by giving me this chip. But if she were resisting for the same reasons I've been--not because she doesn't share my feelings, but because she fears the consequences--then perhaps I have to be the one to make the leap...

I'm on my way to the door when my communicator sounds. I'm certain it's Kathryn, I've already started to say her name when Torres' voice interrupts me.

"Sorry to wake you, Commander, but one of our long-range probes has stopped transmitting. I cleaned up the final images it sent, and it looks to me like the day we've been afraid of is here. I know the Borg are a touchy subject for you..."

In the seconds it takes to reorient myself, I hardly heard a word B'Elanna says. Yes, we knew the time of decision was coming--but not so soon, the moment when we'll have to decide whether to risk our lives and souls to pass through Hell, or whether to turn around. Kathryn and I have never discussed it, though the anticipation has hung over us since the moment we each learned we were in the Delta Quadrant. Borg Space. Possibly our future's end.

Torres is saying, "I think we should notify the Captain, too."

"Agreed. I'll get her. Chakotay out." I turn automatically to the closet where my uniforms hang, begin pulling one on. "Chakotay to Janeway." I speak evenly, business tone. I want so desperately to say something...but Torres would not have contacted us in the middle of the night about anything short of an impending disaster. Kathryn and I will have to talk later.

"Go ahead, Commander."

"I'm sorry to wake you, Captain..."

"You didn't wake me. I'm on the holodeck."

"The holodeck...?" Well, that makes sense. The holodeck is where she usually retreats when she needs to work through feelings she doesn't think she can share with a crewmember. Later, I remind myself. "Captain, I think you should come to engineering..."

Leaving my quarters, pumped with adrenaline, I discover nonetheless that I'm happy. I'm certain that nothing, not even the Borg, can stand against us--let alone between us. Later, I'll tell her. And show her.

I won't let her face this--any of it--alone.