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Paramount/Viacom ;-P~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Based on the episode: Shattered |
Date:03/06/01
Rating: PG-13 (J/C) |
By Turtlewoman
| He sat there chuckling. That crack she made about her temporal travel wasn't going to stop her one little bit from trying to wheedle information out of him the rest of the night. Her curiosity was one of the great constants of the universe. He had always loved it when she wheedled. She'd pout, she'd flirt (that was his favorite part), she'd command and she'd bargain. | |
| He let her go on. He loved it when she was playful. She'd parody her own worst behavior, hamming it up so badly that he could never figure out if he wanted to fall on the floor laughing or just sweep her into his arms and kiss her until they were both out of breath. Well, he knew actually. It's just that the second choice really wasn't an option. | |
| God, the years had been kind to her. He loved how she looked. She was more beautiful now than when he'd first met her. He had that comparison fresh in his mind. He drank her with his eyes. She knew it too. She'd blush occasionally and turn away with that small, satisfied little smirk she had and then she'd ham it up even more. It was a part of their game. As long as he never really spoke of it, never responded to her but with his eyes, he could push those parameters almost to breaking. It was an odd way of loving her, but so far it worked, as long as he never acknowledged it out loud. During the time the ship had been temporally fractured he had told her earlier self that there were some barriers they'd never crossed. Technically, that was correct. | |
| They had never kissed, never lain together, never said anything that put them on the other side of that barrier. He didn't actually know if she felt anything for him beyond close friendship, but he did know that she needed to act like a woman once in awhile. She needed to let out her playful, flirtatious and sensual side once in awhile. He was happy that she felt safe enough to let it out with him. So, they never crossed those barriers, but he loved that she still seemed to want him to push against them occasionally. | |
| "Alright, alright. I accept that you can't tell me everything, but surely you can tell me one thing, one little thing that wouldn't break the temporal prime directive." | |
| Ah, here it is, he thought, here is the one thing she really wants to know. | |
| She dropped the wheedling and became shyly serious, avoiding his eyes. "What were we there? I mean, was it the same?" | |
| She didn't have to explain 'it'. He knew what she meant. It was the same question her earlier self had asked. Forward in time or back, it was the same question. He sat pondering the temporal conundrum. What if? What if that one little sentence he had told her earlier self caused the relationship they had now? What if? What if 'it' should have never been? What if? | |
| She watched as he wrestled with what he would tell her. She watched as slowly he became more and more closed to her. She watched as he retreated into himself, hurting and not saying why. She watched as he gently, sadly excused himself and said good night. She watched the empty room. She reached for her empty glass and tipped it to let the remnants from the bottom of the glass slide between her lips, pressing the cider against her tongue, trying to memorize the taste of that last, precious drop. | |
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| Since that last dinner together Chakotay remained remote. Their interactions on the Bridge took on that polite, gracious, surface friendliness that strangers have when they suddenly find themselves working together. A functional, civilized friendliness but dismissible, with no real substance, a deliberate remoteness. He seemed to carry a sadness with him, a longing. He'd look at her when he thought she didn't see him and sigh. When she tried to tease and joke with him, when she tried to be what they had become with each other, he'd back away again. It was frustrating. She'd reach out, and he'd seem to want it, yet he'd never take what she offered. But then he seemed to be asking for her to close the gap between them again. It did occur to her that this is what she'd done to him for years. That perspective did add to her limited supply of patience. | |
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| It didn't add a whole lot, though. She wasn't the Captain because she'd just wait for problems to go away. She was the Captain because she solved problems. She was done with waiting. This was going to be cleared up one way or another and it was going to be cleared up tonight. She rumaged around the edges of the cargo container. Ah, there it was, buried beneath an ocular implant and two Borg armatures. She pulled out the bottle and strode off to confront her first officer. | |
| "Enter." | |
| The doors to his quarters slid open and in she strode with a bottle of his cider. | |
| "What are you doing with that? That's the last bottle!" | |
| "I know. I've saved it for a special occasion." | |
| "You've saved it? That's my cider! What occasion?" | |
| "This is the day..." | |
| "Night." | |
| "Night, then. This is the night that we get rid of that barrier you've put between us. Open this." | |
| She handed him the bottle of cider and went to the replicator for glasses. Automatically, he opened the cider. She stuck the glasses out at him. He thought that they might as well drink the cider, now that it was opened, and poured a healthy portion into each glass. | |
| Kathryn perched herself at one end of his sofa, indicating that he should sit at the other. "Okay my friend," she said, saluting him with the cider, "it's time for a little true confession. What the hell has been eating you? I don't give a damn what the temporal directive states. We have a problem and it's affecting the 'now'. Whatever it is, you don't seem to be making any progress solving it by yourself. There have been plenty of times when I've done the same thing, isolated myself when there has been trouble between us. You are not alone, any more than I was. Nothing ever got resolved until we've worked on it together. This is no different. Now spill. What happened back there that makes you so miserable now?" | |
| He took a sip of the cider, buying time to think, its honeyed sweetness lingering like a memory. "I don't know, Kathryn. I'm not sure, but I may inadvertently affected the time line." He sipped again at the cider. | |
| "Chakotay, I know you. You follow your conscience. Most times, that keeps you in harmony with the rules, occasionally in conflict with them. Sometimes, just sometimes, your contrariness is the moral high ground. What did you do back there that is making you so isolated lately? Whatever it was, I'm sure you did it in good conscience. I only asked how we were with each other, not what you did or why? I just wanted to know if we, well, you know, if that , if I ..you We didn't Well, you know what I mean." | |
| At this point she stopped to sip her cider, overcome with embarrassment. So much of their friendship was non-verbal. She could feel anything and everything for him as long as she never defined what she, what they were feeling. She refused to think of it, refused to allow herself to see a pattern, but took each time they were together as one moment of intense friendship unconnected to any other, each memory isolated in its own sweetness. And there was a blank in those unconnected moments. She had to know if this was a constant with them, regardless of the time line. She felt that she could do anything, accomplish anything, as long as this connection was a constant. It was irrational. She knew it. And she was pushing against morally shaky ground, pushing him to reveal something from another time line. She knew that too. But she also knew what she needed to take from him, even if she wouldn't let it formulate into words in her own mind. She knew she needed that sustenance. She could taste it, as elusive as the lingering taste of cider pressed against her tongue. So, she pushed. | |
| He grinned at her discomfort, warmed by all that it didn't say. "We are a good team, aren't we." | |
| "Yes, we are. So, let's start acting like one again. Start talking." | |
| "It's just that you asked me the same question in that time line. You asked me what we became with each other." | |
| "I see ..and ..?" | |
| "And I told her that there were some barriers that we never cross." | |
| Kathryn waited. She thought of the ancient poet Frost's 'Roads Untaken'. The thought tasted sad. He continued to sit silently. She waited some more. He said nothing. "What else, Chakotay?" | |
| "That's it." | |
| She was stumped. "That's it? I asked what we were together and then you told me the truth. Then what?" | |
| "Well, then nothing. You shook my hand and I came back to this time. That's it." | |
| She rubbed her forehead. Time paradoxes always gave her a headache. "Chakotay, I want you to be really clear here. Explain to me exactly. What is the problem?" That patience thing she had conjured up out of guilt was just about used up. "You've been mooning around for the last three weeks as if you'd lost your best friend." | |
| He looked at her in anguish. | |
| That was it! She looked at him in total exasperation, "Sometimes you can be so thick! One sentence! Do you honestly think I could fall in love with you because of one sentence! Even if that one sentence predisposed me to trust and like you, it certainly didn't make me fall in love with you. You are alluring, but there is no man in the universe so wonderful that I would fall in love with him in one sentence! It took me twenty years to fall in love with Mark, for crying out loud. He's the only one that even comes close to what I feel for you now! I fell in love with you just as slowly Chakotay, based on thousands of things, over the years, not just one sentence! You .I I .I mean oh shit." | |
| Chakotay had listened to her rant on, stunned at what she was saying. He started grinning. Not that contained, he was getting a kick out of her grin. No, this was the full wattage, double dimpled, that still melted her knees, grin. Slowly he began to walk toward her. | |
| She stepped back and took a sip of the cider in an attempt to regain her composure. He took the glass from her hand, placing it on the table as she stood there in acute embarrassment with a mouthful of cider. Deliberately he slid a hand behind her head as the other slid around her waist, pulling her toward him. He kissed her. The cider pressed from between her lips. He sucked it into his mouth, swallowing a bit, then forcing it back into hers. They kissed. She tasted him in the cider. They kissed, the barrier dissolving in the press of cider. They kissed. |
(the way it should have been)
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