My Slave said yesterday that she wished someone would write a story
where Janeway threw herself at Chakotay and just once he turned her
down. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I left off the names of the people
of whom this reminds me, so Paramount doesn't own a damn thing.

DENIAL
by Your Cruise Director

I woke you to apologize. There's no excuse for the things I said
before. I don't expect you to forgive me, but for both our sakes I hope
you'll let me explain.

I wanted to be strong enough to say no to you.

Even while I was convincing myself that it was hopeless--it was never
going to happen, you'd never give me a chance--I suspected otherwise. I
know it sounds like I flattered myself, and maybe I did, but I think I
knew deep down that the reason I wanted to believe you hadn't quite let
go was because you really hadn't. That made me angry--angrier, even,
than if you'd never wanted it in the first place. If you'd been able to
be honest with me, it might have been different, but in those days I'm
not even sure you were being honest with yourself.

By the time you were, I'd nearly convinced myself that I'd moved on. I
knew it wasn't complete, and perhaps never would--that every time I made
love with a woman, your face would intrude on my fantasies, requiring my
constant diligence to banish it--but that was because of my own
delusions rather than because of you. I didn't love you, then. Not that
way. I was too angry, and too hurt, I didn't think real love could
survive that sort of bitterness. I wanted to preserve the memory of how
I had loved you once, untainted by what came after.

So I decided at some point that if you ever asked, I would decline.
Gently, warmly, with great affection--I would be magnanimous, I would
save our friendship, for once I would be in control. I thought that
would give me satisfaction. I even thought it would make me happy just
to know that you wanted me--it would be enough.

I don't think I've ever deluded myself so badly.

Of course I panicked when you finally told me. You destroyed the
illusions which had sustained me, you made me see in an instant that my
sanity was built on lies. I lashed out at you with anything I could
find--every old resentment, any insecurity of yours I could name, your
fears, your secrets--everything you gave me over the years, I flung back
in your face. When you didn't cry or shout back, it just made me worse.
How could you have come to me so calmly, after all this time, why wasn't
it eating at you the way it had eaten at me all this time, corroding,
corrupting, nearly destroying you? Turning you into someone you didn't
recognize, or didn't want to know?

Now that I'm calmer, I know that it did. I realize now that what I took
as signs of your disinterest in me were symptoms of their opposite. Your
depression, your frustration with me and with our work, the way you shut
yourself down, no more flirting, no more intimate conversations, your
inability to find peace--the tensions which grew out of our work
disagreements, the fact that you never confronted me about the other
women in my life--I must have known deep down what it all meant. People
don't send out signals of their apathy. You were broadcasting your
feelings but refusing to speak of them, and refusing to let me speak of
mine--we were both suffocating, yet I couldn't do anything to stop it.

You must understand why I felt I had to push you away. You did the same
thing to me for so long because you thought was the only way to stay
balanced. These feelings are so overwhelming, it's hard not to react
with primitive, frightened instincts. We struggle for breath, we fight
for equilibrium, it never occurs to us that we would be stronger working
together. I'm not sure yet what made you realize we were wrong. I can
only guess why you came to me when you did--what sign you received that
it needed to be now. I didn't see the sign. I thought it was already too
late.

I believed I'd become the man I thought you wanted me to be, the man I
thought I should be. A man who could get past this anger and grief--a
man who could get past hating you and loving you. A man who would not be
such a fool as this. I had thought we both deserved better.

I look at you now, resting after the storm, your head pillowed on a
piece of uniform tossed on my couch. Your hair is gold in the dim light,
your face still flushed though the skin on your wrists and chest is so
pale...almost translucent, speckled with goosebumps in the cooling air.
I remind myself how silly it is to think of you as fragile--as you
showed me earlier, I am the one who needs protection. You didn't break,
not even when you finally conceded to my anger, and showed me your
tears. I'm the one who broke. But when you touched me, I remembered how
it all fit together, and I realized that whatever name I chose to give
the feeling, I did not know who I was without you.

I wanted to be strong enough to say no to you.

I want to weep with gratitude that I was not.