I SWORE I was not going to do this, but Chakotay WOULD NOT SHUT UP and I knew I had to get this episode out of my system once and for all. So here -- one of the many sequels to "Unforgettable." I guess the best way to wipe it out of canon is to take the show at its word, and declare that it never happened.

This was written for the J/C faithful, for reasons you know all too well. Paramount owns the financial rights, which is all they care about and all they deserve ("If money is what you love, then that's what you'll receive" -- Princess Leia). Janeway and Chakotay are still part of me even if I don't want them anymore. You'd think they'd just disappear together already, putting the show and the writers out of their misery.

UNFORGIVABLE
by Your Cruise Director

Personal log, stardate 51818.6.

There's a note on my table dated earlier this week. I wonder if it's a joke, even though it's in my handwriting, and I analyzed the ink -- it's from the one pen I own, given to me by Kathryn as a birthday present. She said I should sign some of my artwork in ink, so I made her a sand painting and signed it on the back, with an inscription. I can't think about that right now.

The note is an account of a love affair I supposedly had with a woman named Kellin. It's very detailed, though it looks like it was written in haste, and things get a little fuzzy at the end...like I was having trouble remembering. It never happened. I'm sure of it. I don't remember anything, not the woman or her ship or her entire species. I tell myself in the first paragraph of the note that that's going to happen -- I'm going to forget her and everything about her -- but that doesn't make it any easier to believe.

Because I don't want to believe it.

It's got nothing to do with Kellin -- she seems like an interesting enough woman. Scientific background, command position. In trouble for standing up for what she believes in. Sounds familiar. I describe at length her long blonde hair and big eyes, and how forward she was, telling me what she wanted...yep, just my type. A little too much so, if you know what I mean. Like Riley, or like Seska when I first met her.

I make the same mistakes with women over and over. Kathryn's been my exception. There's no way I'd throw out what I have with her just because I met some young blonde. Is there? I can't figure out how Kellin was manipulating me, but if she could wipe out my memories, I'm sure she could control my brain in other ways. Maybe she made up the whole story and stuck it in my head, or fed it to me the way she did the first time, telling me we'd fallen in love before. It can't be true.

I don't want it to be true.

Kellin's not the problem: it's me. I don't want to be the man in this story. And I'd rather be dead than believe that Kathryn's the other woman in this story. "Other woman" is the wrong phrase, really; she's not a woman at all here, not in any sense that matters. She's my friend, that's it. I don't feel anything for her other than loyalty. She sends me straight into Kellin's arms, and I go.

I'm not that kind of man. I'm not someone who'd decide a fling with an alien could be more satisfying than my relationship with my closest companion, faithful compatriot, and respected leader -- the woman I've been in love with for more than three years. I know she has feelings for me that she won't act on. I've known that for almost as long as I've known I loved her. I'm not happy about it, but I've accepted it, and it doesn't change my feelings for her -- even when I'm turned on by another woman, or when I sometimes think about forcing the issue with Kathryn one way or another.

I said in this note that I fell in love with Kellin twice. I called that love? A few conversations about how she wants me, a tussle on my couch? Am I really that pathetic -- so desperate to feel wanted in an old-fashioned macho sense that I'll fall all over any woman who says she needs me? Like a boy who doesn't know who or what he's about. It's grotesque, a parody of love out of a dirty holozine.

I think I hate this Kellin, whoever she is.

Paris must have been behind this somehow. I know he's having some problems with B'Elanna, she told me he's been going on about needing space and wanting freedom. This sounds like a fantasy of yours, Captain Proton -- meeting a beautiful woman who already thinks you're strong and powerful, who's in love with you for heroic deeds you can't even remember doing. When you ask your steady girlfriend how she feels about you getting attached to the new one, she gives you permission. So you get to have a responsibility-free fling with someone who forgets all about you afterwards, which is a little hard on your ego but at least you won't have to remember the pain of parting.

Then you write down your memories as a souvenir for when you need to gratify yourself. A fantasy affair that no one ever has to know about. The oblivious chaste soulmate can be kept in the dark. And no possibility of latent responsibilities or paternity issues later on. This is jerk-off material, plain and simple.

So why all the elaborate background? I don't really believe Tom would do it even as a joke. But whoever did write this went into excruciating detail. Snippets of conversations with Harry about Seven. A long account of rescuing Kellin from her ship, after she hailed me by name on the bridge. The Doctor treating her in sickbay, specific notes about her injuries. The captain hovering around but also shoving me at Kellin, almost as if she wanted me to get together with the woman. Telling me I'd better decide whether I trust Kellin before I figure out if I want her around forever. I can't stand reading those parts. I can't even stand the flirty things Kathryn supposedly said to me, like that she has no trouble believing Kellin fell in love with me. Would she only say those things to me if she was sure it was over and I'd moved past her? Is she that timid? Not my Kathryn. No.

And the idiotic things I say! Kellin tells me we've met before, I gush that I'm sure I would remember if we had. She keeps announcing that she's in love with me, I keep blushing like a first-year cadet. Getting romantic advice from Neelix, of all people. Crawling all over Kellin in access hatchways. We have stupid conversations about what food I like and how I helped her on her mission -- me, me, me, that's all we ever talk about. I don't know anything about her from this note, really, other than what she looked like and what her narrow-minded, isolationist species acted like.

At the end I state that I wrote this down because pen and paper are the only things that won't be affected by the memory wipe, which works on people and machines alike. I understand how a targeted computer virus might work, but a species whose readings can't be retained in the synapses of other races? I'm going to have to ask the doctor whether this is even theoretically possible, or whether there would have to be repressed memories in all of us. It sure sounds phony to me. You know what my last line is? "Love works in mysterious ways." That sounds more like something Neelix would say while trying to cheer up a lovesick junior officer. I must have had some kind of alien virus affecting my brain, that much is for sure.

I look in the mirror and I'm not sure who I am anymore. I've taken some weight off since I started playing hoverball with B'Elanna again, and the Doc's anti-aging treatments have made my hair turn back to black from the salt-and-pepper that was starting to come in when I was in the Maquis. I know it's important that we stay healthy for as long as possibly on a mission which could be as long as this one, but those treatments seem wrong to me somehow. Like I'm trying to deny who I am, how old I am, how much of my life I've lived. I don't want a second chance. I got one already, when we got stranded out here -- I have no interest in throwing that away, turning into some typical guy whose spirituality and background don't matter anymore. I'm defined by my ancestry, my beliefs, the people I love. Take those away, and I'm nobody. No values, no intelligence, no strength. An angry warrior. A man whose stories are all cliches.

I wonder whether Kathryn's been letting the Doctor perform the anti-aging regenerations on her. They can have unpleasant effects -- hormone surges, jitteriness, things she can't afford as a starship captain. It seems to me that she's aged recently, not just her appearance but her attitude. Her decision not to let Seven harness Omega energy seemed very out of character with the woman I first met in this quadrant, the one who destroyed the Array. She keeps saying that the final frontier has barriers that shouldn't be crossed -- that's not my Kathryn. But it also is my Kathryn, the one who shut me out after New Earth, who's still shutting me out.

Maybe I do recognize Captain Janeway in this story. I just don't want to.

I wonder what she'd say if I showed her this. I'd like to believe it would upset her, but she might make my worst fears come true: she might tell me she can never act upon any feelings she might have and dismiss me to find happiness wherever I can. Almost as though she didn't care. It would be worse than finding out she never loved me at all. Unforgivable. Unforgettable. It's not true. Or if it is, it's not something I want to know.

Paper burns. Without this written reminder, no one need ever know -- not
even me. I will go now to light a candle, and pray for purification.