Sunshower ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I marveled at a meadow that was an unbelievable mint green. Checking my tricorder, I confirmed my suspicions; the strange color was a result of the photosynthetic pigments in the grass below my feet. My scientific curiosity about what Tom had dubbed the “Pastel Planet” won over my initial decision to stay in the holodeck with the Doctor. He was coming to terms with a new dimension of his increasing sentience, a triage decision that had cost the life of a young ensign several months before. The last time he had “malfunctioned”, I’d simply deleted all his memories associated with the incident. Seven had convinced me to see the Doctor as more than a machine, and this time I allowed him to deal with the knowledge the way any human doctor would. I finished my scans on the grass and grunted as pain shot through the tired muscles of my neck. I’d spent most of the night watching over the Doctor, reading poetry to stay awake. That is, until he noted my exhaustion and ordered me to sleep. Now I suppose my neck was paying the price. I began to rotate my head in order to relieve the cramped muscles. “I can make you some liniment for that, Captain.” Neelix said suddenly, his voice coming a few meters to my right. “I’ve still got some stupendous Talaxian herbs in my quarters.” I smiled at Voyager’s resident cook (it would have been too much of a stretch to call him a chef) and Chief Morale Officer. “No thank you, Neelix. I’m sure it’s not serious enough to deplete your stores.” He nodded and led the alpha team to another sector. I’d ordered two teams to search for any edible flora to add to the “fresh” food on the ship in order to conserve energy and base matter. Any more salads liberally garnished with Leola root and I’m sure I’d have a mutiny on my hands. I wish we weren’t decades from home… Suddenly I felt tired and weary. Groaning, I sat down on the mint green grass and noticed for the first time that the sky was an appealing baby blue. Perhaps we could stay a fortnight so that the crew could take some much needed shore leave. The stress of being in unknown space for over four years had begun to manifest itself in my senior staff, and the events of the past months weren’t helping matters… So many decisions… so many choices… were they really the right ones? Could things have been different? And if so, could they have been better? Am I really so certain that I can lead them home, that I won’t choose the path to destruction? When I was a child, I used to close my eyes before I made a choice I knew I would have to live with. Hoping that it would be easier not to look at the consequences, wishing that I wouldn’t have to deal with them if I didn’t see them looming at me. I am not a child any longer. I must not close my eyes. I mustn’t hide from what’s happening to my crew. The Doctor was distraught. B’Ellana was still smarting from the fact that I’d violated her wishes by allowing a Cardassian holo-doc to save her life using research gained from unwilling Bajoran subjects. Tom had recently been demoted to Ensign over a dire breach of protocol when we encountered the Moneans. And Seven… An unwilling sigh escaped from my throat as I remembered when the reverse-engineered Borg Vinculum gave her the equivalent of multi-personality disorder. There was such fear in her eyes, and what was worse was that Seven was willing to admit to that fear. “Captain, I don’t know if I can tolerate this condition much longer. My courage is insufficient.” I’d nearly lost it, I wanted so much to hold her in my arms and tell her that everything would be all right, that we would both find a way out of this. Instead, I told her to be brave and rushed out of sickbay. I thought I could handle it, but I let my command mask drop, briefly, on the Bridge when Chakotay asked me how Seven was holding up. Tears had bunched up in the corners of my eyes, and I hoped that he thought I was just tired. It was terrible to see Seven so weak, so helpless... No, you were the one who was helpless, Kathryn. This time there wasn’t anything you could do to assuage her fears, her pain. There was nothing you could do to rescue her from herself. I shook my head harshly, trying to stop my meandering thoughts. I’d been catching myself thinking about Seven of Nine, projecting my feelings onto my most insouciant and arrogant crew member, wondering what she thought and felt about her life on Voyager. I think about Seven more often than is proper for the Captain of a starship, but each time, with each thought I tried to tamp down my feelings, to compensate for my musings by being too distant to Seven. It worked, for the most part. I was proud that I’d kept the struggle to myself, never letting it get in the way of my duty. But sometimes… Sometimes I’m seized by a restless melancholy I’m terrified to identify, and suddenly I find myself standing in Cargo Bay 2 watching Seven of Nine regenerate. Yearning, like cold steel, runs through my heart. Deep in the cathedral of my ribs, I run from the truth that is spoken endlessly in supplication and benediction. The truth that explains why Seven of Nine could weld my body to hers with a look… if I let her, if I let myself. She’s been sustaining me -- in an exhausting manner-- ever since she came on board. Somehow I relearn things through Seven; I come to so many realizations that wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t been mentoring Seven in her humanity. I even found myself deriving a perverse pleasure from going toe-to-toe with Seven of Nine and her maddeningly precise utilitarianism. I suddenly found myself enjoying the sparks that flew when our minds met, when Seven used her Borg-honed world-view like a rapier. I wish I could close my eyes… Seven was an unexpected friend, a good friend… at least for now. When we get back to Earth, maybe I’ll allow myself to think of the other possible dimensions of our relationship. When I’m through with this tour of duty and don’t have to think of Seven as a crewman under my command, when I don’t have to be a Captain with my stifling propriety firmly locked in place, when I don’t have to worry about the safety of the ship and the morale of its crew, when I don’t have to remember that I stranded over a hundred brilliant individuals in an uncharted wasteland, when I can be and simply take joy from being. When I’m home. Home… In spite of all the hardships and loss, or perhaps because of them, visions of home keep me buoyed and anchored to my mission, to my duty. I remember the neatness of my family’s traditionalist home in Bloomington, Indiana. The moon-yellow kitchen with its silvery pots and pans on hooks. The smooth wood table, the polished stoneware plates in a pale shade of peach, the narrow clenched spirals of the braided doormat… Molly, my irrepressible Irish setter… Phoebe’s studio in the back room, and the smell of turpentine… My mother sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on top of buttered toast… Lying in flickering sleep, on the pale blue sheets of my bed… The shape of my father’s shoulders, his heavy-lidded eyes like those on the marble busts of Roman emperors… The shape of his tombstone mimicking his shape, leaving me aching for his strength and guidance… The sky filled with raw, bunched clouds… The cornfields that stretched out endlessly, coarse green and yellow… Completely unlike this uninhabited “Pastel Planet”, with its meadows and waterfalls and the warm wind that was mocking me with its peacefulness. Mocking the dull ache in my head with its slow caress of the iodine brown shadows I know I have under my eyes. This wind that throws emptiness around me. I wish I could close my eyes… A noise to my left drew me back to my surroundings: the sibilant shimmering of a transporter beam. I turned my head and found Seven of Nine looking into my eyes. “Captain.” She said by way of acknowledgment, nodding slightly in my direction. “Seven.” I replied. “What brings you here? I thought food-gathering was a ‘waste of your abilities’.” The ends of Seven’s lips twitched briefly downwards, the cupid-bow of her lush lips expressing displeasure. “The Doctor insisted that I ‘get some sun’ despite his knowledge that my nanoprobes and the regular diet of nutritional supplements he himself prescribed do not necessitate exposure. I am functioning within normal parameters.” “So why’d you come down here?” I said, smiling for the first time that day at the thought of Seven’s pale skin sporting a healthy glow, her blonde hair shining from the sun’s kisses. “He was tedious and persistent.” Seven explained. “Beaming down for a short time with my PADDs seemed to be more efficient than attempting to work while he badgered me over the comm link.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at Seven’s predicament. We both knew that the Doctor’s obnoxiousness was a sign that he was feeling better, but it was hard to be completely happy about it. “May I ask what you are doing here, Captain?” Seven asked. “I was not aware that your help was required for so simple a task.” “Oh, I’m not here for the harvest.” I smiled. “I came because I heard Tom talking about the ‘Pastel Planet’ and I just wanted to see it for myself.” “I see.” Seven said. “Do you find it appealing?” “Well, it’s not the colors I’m used to… and part of me feels as if I were on a gigantic birthday cake, but it’s pretty enough.” Seven canted her head to the side briefly, an action that I had come to find endearing. “The grass, the rich brown of the tree trunks, the lilac and lavender plants that dot this meadow… it all looks like the icing on a cake.” I explained helpfully. “So you perceive it to be appetizing?” Seven clarified. “I think strangely beautiful would be a better description.” I grinned. “Certainly one of the more pleasant and fascinating sights along the way.” The ex-drone raised an eyebrow. “You are exaggerating. This planet contains no sentient life and is only set apart from others by the strange pigmentation in the vegetation.” “The universe does not always clothe itself in grandiose beauty, Seven.” “Indeed.” “I got some preliminary readings of the pigments before I decided to sprawl out on the grass.” I said, holding out the tricorder just as a drop of water fell on its screen. Looking up, I gasped as honey-thick sunlight flowed across the meadow, the baby blue sky like clouded marble from which rain sifted like the tears of cherubs. Seven of Nine, slender, young and languid dominating the foreground. “Ohhhh…” I let out a gasp. “Captain?” “It’s a sunshower, Seven.” I explained. “I haven’t… It’s been a while since I’ve been in one.” Seven moved silently, gracefully coming to sit beside me. “You find this beautiful.” Seven stated. I find you beautiful. God, how I want to tell you…. Instead, I only nod imperceptibly, mesmerized by the delicate drops of rain that fell on Seven’s porcelain skin. She was all I dared not imagine or wish for… Her eyes were warm and bright, and she looked exquisite as she sat in a blaze of silence. Her implants gleamed like the pewter surface of a twilight pond. I longed to drown in the depths of her eyes, there to be held without breath or desire as if in a world stopped still. Seven seemed shot through with some wild astral substance so hard and dense that granite would powder into dust beneath her blows. But I knew, somehow, that her arms were soft like the breast of a dove, that I would be warm and safe and cherished in her embrace. I yearned to rest my mouth against the beat of her heart. In the distance, I heard running. We both turned to watch Tom Paris catch up to Voyager’s beautiful Chief Engineer, taking her in his arms. B’Ellana twirled around, laughing. It wasn’t the most graceful of moves, but neither was it out of control. She seemed to exult in the movement, laughing gaily. I wonder if Seven will ever laugh like that, if she’ll ever give in to her feelings, overcome the painfully forced equanimity that other people have never been forced to develop. I heard B’Ellana’s laughter tinkling in the distance. Bemused by the sight, I remembered Dante’s immortal words… "In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria, dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova… In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day that I first met you, appear the words, 'Here begins a new life'." I wasn’t even aware that I had said the lines aloud ‘til Seven responded with another excerpt. “Perfectly one does all salvation see, who among women sees my lady’s face; so those who walk now in her company must give God thanks for such a lavish grace.” I turned toward her, nearly struck dumb by the beauty of her profile in the glowing sunlight and the tender rain. The lines came out of the recesses of my mind and spilled out through my mouth. “Like others, you so baffle and amaze, lady… “My glance…” I continued earnestly. “I know not where to view a beauty so delightful and so new that may compare with what enchants my gaze.” Without missing a beat, Seven replied as if she could see the patinated words gliding under her eyes like a river coursing over polished stones. “She has in all her ways such loveliness that nobody can e’er recall her glow without a sigh of loving tenderness.” Seven declared with a depth of sincerity that nearly stunned me into silence. Well, eidetic memory or not, I’m not going to be outdone by the likes of you, Seven of Nine. “I felt a loving spirit suddenly, past a long slumber” I replied, “in my heart arise”. To my surprise, Seven looked away quickly, turning her head and looking into middle distance, staring at Tom and B’Ellana with… was that sorrow? Envy? Slowly she spoke in a voice aching with more emotion than I’d ever heard from her before, not meeting my gaze. “These
eyes of mine could very plainly see Seven… Where is this coming from? What are you trying to say? She smiled slightly, softly, a whisper of a smile. I trembled at the sensations coursing through my body as Seven continued to recite, as the gentle rain fell down her face like tears. "You,
who along the road of Love proceed, “Seven…” I said my voice hoarse and otherworldly. What are you doing? “What… where did you…?” The young woman stood, holding her hand out to me, palm up, as though giving me the whole universe in the form of light and space. Superficially she seemed serene but beneath her control was a power and an intensity that threatened to burst into flames and sear my soul in the process. She stood there for what seemed like an eternity, her silence so certain, so solid… until I reached for her hand. I stood up so quickly that my vision went dark and my legs trembled, unsure and unsteady. What must I look like, the rain and the dew marking my uniform, my face wet from the rain and warm from the sun? “Orthostatic hypotension.” “What?” “Orthostatic hypotension” Seven stated coldly, the emotion gone from her voice. “A fall in blood pressure caused by standing too quickly that produces a brief dimming of vision.” I turned my face to hers, still grasping her hand in mine, breathing deeply of the silence and her elusive scent. I opened my eyes to her intoxicating beauty, and was profoundly moved by the emotions that dwelt beyond her face. “Seven…” I asked. “Are you ever lonely?” “Kathryn.” She said softly, and that was all. She stared at me for a long moment, and I saw the subtleties of changing expressions in her face. But then she turned away, gently taking her hand from mine, and I knew the conversation was finished. I felt two parallel lines of ache start in my throat as she beamed out. That ache in my throat that always mirrored the dull pain in my chest that I tried to assuage by pushing my feelings across the space between me and my crew. The incessant throbbing that has only been soothed by the occasional touch on the shoulder, the pat on the back, my hand on an elbow… Just another way of closing my eyes… Sometimes I feel as if I’m opening a closet that’s already too full and shoving something else in, then leaning against the door so it won’t burst open. My life has so many doors, so many decisions, a myriad of choices that may never lead me home. On this ship, in my quarters, I do not sleep. I merely close my eyes to the soft darkness that shrouds what is to come. On this ship, in Cargo Bay 2, I close my eyes to the darkness of imprisonment, I hide from the decision that cannot be made… that I may never be able to make. Someday I will have to open them. Someday
I will have to open my eyes.
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