The
Void Before ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A footstep broke his reverie, and without turning around he greeted his Captain… and friend. “I’m sorry, Chakotay.” The Admiral said. “I’ll come back later.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “Stay. This is getting ridiculous anyway. You’d think we were still courting her.” “Well…yes.” Kathryn agreed tentatively. Then she moved forward and placed the bouquet of lilies on the grave. “I suppose it is a little silly.” Chakotay stuck his hands in his pockets. The harsh winter wind sapped his energy. He felt old. He watched the Admiral as she arranged the flowers on the grave. “It’s been 19 years, Kathryn. Did you know that?” “I…hadn’t realized.” Chakotay shook his head. “Yes, you have. More than you probably like to admit.” Kathryn stood up, dusting the knees of her slacks with the palms of her hands. “Well, old wounds…” “I didn’t mean it like that.” Chakotay replied. “I…She would have appreciated it. Letting me stay on as your Ex-O, keeping me busy after she…” Kathryn cleared her throat. “Well…what are friends for?” “Yes.” Chakotay said. “Indeed.” “Well, I should get back to the…uh…personnel reports, I left at the office.” Kathryn said, turning around. Chakotay caught her by the shoulder and forced her to face him. He stuck out his hand. “I forgive you.” Kathryn looked down briefly, and then looked him straight in the eye. “Chakotay, no matter what you believe… Once you were married, I bowed out. There was never anything between us. Even if sometimes, I may have wanted there to be. There was never a more faithful woman than your wife. She loved you so much. She always did. She loved you more.” Chakotay took a deep breath. “She loved you longer.” “God damn it Chakotay, she married you!” Kathryn spat. “Isn’t that enough?” “Yes.” Chakotay replied, calmly. “I had her in life. But she died in your arms. And for years I’ve resented – No, hated you for it. Now I can forgive you.” “Why?” “When Miral was injured in that Cardassian skirmish last year, do you remember that?” Kathryn nodded. “She told me that for a long time, while we thought she was unconscious, she could hear everything. She just couldn’t open her eyes or even move. And she heard you talking to the Doctor.” Kathryn’s face reddened. “What did she hear me say?” “She said that when the Doctor told you she was going to make it, you bawled like a baby.” Chakotay replied. Kathryn turned away. “Mitigating circumstances.” “Yes. I’ve been thinking a lot about it ever since.” said Chakotay, his voice turning quiet. “Towards the end, when the nanoprobes could only maintain her nervous system… she was in such terrible pain. And I keep wondering if she felt the way Miral did… if she was alive and she heard everyone saying goodbye to her and the Doctor saying she didn’t have much time… Then I think, maybe I should have done it.” “Chakotay…” Kathryn cautioned. “I should have ended it, like she asked me to. But I thought she was giving up. I thought she was giving up on me and our life together.” Chakotay sighed, wiping away at the corner of his eye with annoyance. “She was always the more sensible one. She knew it was all over.” “Chakotay, don’t blame yourself.” “Oh no. I don’t.” he said sincerely. “I don’t blame anyone anymore. I just wish that I had had enough sense to stop stuffing her full of medicine…then I would have been there, with you, when it happened.” “Her last thoughts were of you.” Kathryn said. “She was worried about leaving you. She told me so herself.” Chakotay gave a small smile. “Yes. She would have done that.” There was an awkward pause, and the Admiral had turned to go when Chakotay gave a short laugh. “I can still remember how happy she was when you agreed to marry us, and stayed throughout the reception.” A tear traveled unnoticed down Kathryn’s face. “You know what she said to me?” Chakotay asked. “She smiled and whispered: ‘The Captain loves me’. That was really a nice thing to do, Kathryn.” But when Chakotay turned around, Kathryn Janeway had vanished. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Admiral Kathryn Janeway slammed down her communicator on the table with a thud. She picked up a snifter and filled a third of it with brandy. She put on some Bach and stood by the window, contemplating the San Francisco skyline. Her left hand massaged her temples and her right hand swirled the brandy around the glass. Damn Chakotay. Damn him for being so damned sentimental. The dead were gone, they would never come back. And sooner or later everyone we love is scattered into the blackness of time, so what the hell is the point with this memorialization of the dead? Live in the present. That was the only way to get by. She shouldn’t even have gone to the cemetery. What was the point? She was dead. Her smile, her voice, her eyes… atoms scattered in the Delta Quadrant, a bronze plaque was the only solid testament to her existence. Annika. She’d wanted to be called Annika ever since they had… last spoken about their relationship. She had lived a full life. She had smiled, laughed, danced, played pool, argued with B’Ellana, flirted with the Doctor, slandered Neelix’s cooking. Annika loved, fought, lied, repented, struggled. True to her simulation, Annika had requested quarters and requisitioned a complete kitchen. She donned a Starfleet uniform, though she never chose to earn her commission. Annika had been a fine young woman, a superb crewman and a doting wife. But she wasn’t Seven. Seven of Nine had died a long time ago. Never again had they played Velocity, alone or together. Gone were the late night visits and stimulating discussions, the tiptoeing into Cargo Bay 2 to watch her regenerate. Only their heated arguments about efficiency remained, but even those were conducted in public, during staff meetings and briefings. They were all that was left of Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero, the woman who had once loved her. Kathryn drew on her discipline, the discipline of a Starfleet Captain, the pride and focus of a Janeway… and she had endured. She’d remained cordial, even supportive, throughout the abrupt transition, the wedding, the reception, the long maddening nights imagining what went on in her first officer’s quarters. Kathryn had survived with most of her sanity, if not her soul, intact. And then it had happened. “You can’t ask me that!” Chakotay shouted as he stalked out of sickbay. “I can’t. I won’t!” Several crewmen joined Kathryn as she stared at the retreating figure. Slowly, she stood up and made her way to the main biobed. “Captain.” came a weak voice. “Hello. I hope I’m not intruding.” “No, not at all.” She replied, between hacking coughs. “I’ve been reading some reports, catching up on Icheb and Naomi’s progress…now that I’ve had so much time to myself.” She looked horrible, pasty and emaciated… weak. What was left of her hair had been artfully covered by a white turban held together by a simple brooch, a gift from B’Ellana and Tom. “I believe I’ve upset Chakotay.” “Oh… well… I’m sure he’ll get over it.” “Yes.” She said distractedly. “Perhaps.” The Captain bent to arrange the pillows behind the young woman, trying to make her more comfortable. “Captain… I would like to make a request... the same favor I asked Chakotay that made him so upset.” “Yes?” “If, at any point, my nanoprobes can no longer sustain my brain…and I have to be placed on cortical stimulation…I do not want to be resuscitated.” Kathryn was too shocked to speak. In an instant, all the feelings, the memories rushed into her soul in torrents. “Captain… the part of me that makes me who I am…it will be gone by then.” “No.” The Captain croaked out. “I…I’m sorry. I can’t.” “You can.” The young woman smiled sadly. “You don’t want to, but you can. I know about death, Captain, and I am not afraid of it. I do not want to be here, a drain on your resources, a burden to Chakotay…” “The Doctor might find a cure. B’Ellana and Vorik are working every day, searching. They say they may be close… If we placed you on consistent cortical stimulation, or stasis, and if we discovered a new treatment-“ “I have had enough medicines pumped into my body.” She insisted. “He won’t let you die.” “Neither would you.” She straightened her back. “But it is not his life or his decision… anymore than it is yours.” Her frail white hands trembled with effort as she raised it to cup the Captain’s face, the last tenderness they would ever share… the last glimpse of Seven of Nine that the Captain would ever have. “Kathryn… I will always be alive in you.” The Captain hadn’t been able to say anything. Not then. And the young woman had never mentioned it again. But when the time came, when she lay back in bed, unable to move, unable even to breathe for herself as her nanoprobes could sustain less and less of her organs... she had done it. In those last moments as Kathryn held her and stroked her face, she had smiled. The same smile that used to dazzle Kathryn every time she woke up beside the woman she loved. Kathryn
had never told him. She knew better than to speak to Chakotay about
anything concerning his wife ever again. But in the years since
her death, an understanding had developed between Kathryn and Chakotay
that had never been there before. It wasn’t so much a shared
sense of loss, as they grieved in their own ways for their own reasons…
it was as if the people they had been had died and they were merely
empty shells that continued to exist. Chakotay sipped his tea only to find that it had gone cold. He wondered how long he had been sitting out here, in the darkness… a sad, crazy old man after all, just like his grandfather. He closed his eyes, and remembered Annika. He was glad Kathryn had been with her when she died, he was glad that he hadn’t been. She had looked so happy. He would have missed the sequence of algorithms hidden under what seemed an innocuous encryption code, they were so amazingly compact, so obviously her own. But Annika… Seven… she had always been Seven, really, no matter what she called herself… Seven had trained him well. The nanoprobes had shut down in an ingenious pattern, mimicking her regeneration cycle. It had been painless. She had died in her sleep, efficient to the end. Even her funeral arrangements and her personal effects had been orderly… her few possessions and her letters to the crew itemized and ready for distribution. Chakotay shut his eyes tightly at the memory of how convenient it all was. Everything that had been Annika had been parceled off to Naomi, Icheb, B’Ellana, the Doctor, and himself… and everything that had been Seven, every object she had loved in quiet secrecy, had been sealed in a neat container for the Captain. The bitterness still rose like bile in his throat, not because of Kathryn’s role in her death, not even due to any perceived infidelity. She was never his. Oh, she had loved him, certainly. He still yearned for the tenderness of her embrace, and the slow smile that would greet him after his shift, the quiet touch of her hand in his when she was frightened. But everything he had loved about her; her fire, her spirit, the essence of who she was beneath the layers of her carefully crafted persona, the woman who cried after each time they made love that first year together… so softly he had thought it a dream… this woman who shed the tears of an angel… that was who he had come to love. He had raged against his selfishness, he struggled to release her from her vows and give her a second chance, to do what was right. And when he had finally spoken about it, when he told her to leave him and never look back… she had only closed her eyes and turned away from him. “You know as well as I do, Chakotay, that sometimes freedom of choice is the freedom from choice.” And he had never spoken about it again, their marriage an incomplete thought. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Admiral Kathryn Janeway slept fitfully, one arm underneath her pillow. The fingers of her hand were nearly touching the drawer of her nightstand which was slightly ajar, several doses of sedative cluttered near a hypospray. Her right hand clutched a PADD with a short message.
There are no more words between us, yet so many things to be said. No word seems to be the whole word, the correct word to express my emotions. I love you, as I always have. I only wish that you had known, or that I could have made you understand, that what we could have had was not “too good to be true”. It was too good to be false. And despite myself, as always, I thought that someday I would again be… Yours, |
~Finis~ Comments and Constructive Criticism are much appreciated. |