Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager belongs to Paramount, the writers, and whoever else can legally claim it. "Hunters" was written by Jeri Taylor, and no copywrite infringement is intended by the scenes I've quoted; quotes and summaries are used only for reference as to where in the timeline events in this story take place. I am making no profit from this. But I'm getting happier characters and fans.
AN: This started as a 25 Moments scene for "Hunters," as one of the scenes I always wanted to see was Chakotay telling Kathryn about his letter, and a longer talk between them about hers. It soon grew much too long for a short story, so I tossed in a few more elements and developed an actual plot. We begin a little bit before "Hunters" starts. I obviously didn't want to put all of "Hunters" in this fic, so the episode is mostly summarized and events referred to. Two conversation between J & C are lifted directly from the episode, because I needed to extrapolate on their feelings during them for future events to work out. I've never taken full scenes from an episode like this before, hopefully it won't make things too boring for everyone. And hopefully everyone remembers the episode well enough that this won't be too confusing. This is, of course, another J/C fic.
One Last Try
By Lady Callista
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"Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart." -Kay Knudsen
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Chapter 1: Heart
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Dear Mom,
I feel like I should have a thousand things to say, but other than that I love you and Phoebe, and miss you both so very much, I really don't know where to start.
By now I'm sure Starfleet has told you that Voyager wasn't destroyed as everyone came to believe. But we were definitely lost just the same.
I've been trying so hard to get home to you, and I've got a great crew helping me do it, but 70,000 light-years is a long way. Sometimes at night, I just lay in my bed looking out at the stars, and I remember doing the same when I was little, and how you or daddy would…
Kathryn stopped reading with a jolt, head snapping up as the door to her quarters chimed. She took a second to compose for face before calling out, "Come in."
"I thought we were going to go over that together, tomorrow." Chakotay flashed her a smile as he set the bottle of wine he carried on her table.
"Sorry?" She said from the couch, deactivating the PADD and setting it on the coffee table.
"That's not the crew evaluations?" He tilted his head, moving over towards her as he noticed that she seemed to be upset.
"No, it's uh… it's the letter I wrote to my mother a few weeks ago." She tried to keep her voice casual but knew she didn't succeed. "I found it in a stack of PADDs when I was looking for an engineering report. I should have just deleted it."
Chakotay gave her a gentle smile as he crossed to sit beside her. "My letter to Sekaya is sitting on the table next to my bed, just in case I ever get a chance to send it."
"What did you say to her?" Kathryn wanted to know.
"Oh, you know, hey I'm alive and not in prison." He forced a chuckle, not wanting to tell her that a full, long paragraph had been about her.
She managed a smile. "That's pretty much how my letter to my mom started, although it was, hey, I'm alive and I miss you. Did you write to anyone but your sister?"
Chakotay shook his head, a tinge of sadness coming to his eyes. "I don't really have anyone else to write to. Pretty much all of my friends were in the Maquis, and I doubt Starfleet would deliver those letters even if they knew where to find them. You?"
"No." She said softly, her own eyes growing introspective. "There was another one I was going to write, but I never got around to it, and once we lost the chance to send them it didn't seem to matter."
"Your fiancé?" He asked gently, ignoring the clenching of his heart. It wasn't like he didn't know she was engaged, but in the day to day swing of things he didn't think about it, especially since even before the Doctor had come back they had all known they were likely declared dead, and it was doubtful significant others would still be waiting for them once they got home.
Kathryn nodded, touching his knee briefly before getting up and crossing to the table to open the bottle of wine and pour them each a glass. "It was just so hard to write mom's letter. I mean, other than hey we're alive, what do we say? She doesn't know any of the people on the ship other than Tuvok, so it's not like I can really tell her stories about people, and I don't want to scare her by listing all the dangers we've run into out here. So I told her I was alive, and that I missed her and loved her, and then got stuck. I wrote a little about memories from when I was little, things I think about when I'm sad or lonely out here, but I never even finished the letter."
"I told Sekaya some about the people here, about my friends, but I know what you mean. She's probably thought for years now that I was dead, and now she finds out I'm alive, but so far away and still not able to talk to her or be there for her if she needs me." Chakotay accepted the glass of wine she offered as she returned to her seat beside him.
"To our families." Kathryn gave him a small smile as she raised her glass.
"To Gretchen and Phoebe." He returned the smile.
"And Sekaya."
They had each just taken a sip when they were interrupted by Harry's voice over the comm system. "All senior officers report to the bridge."
"Janeway to Bridge." Kathryn snapped at once as her and Chakotay rose from the couch.
"Bridge here, Captain." Harry replied in an excited voice, reporting without waiting for her obvious question. "We're receiving a communiqué from an unknown source. And Captain, it's on a Starfleet frequency."
"I'm on my way." Kathryn replied, sharing a curious and at the same time hopeful glance with Chakotay as they left her quarters and strode rapidly down the corridor towards the turbolift.
Her first thought was that Starfleet Command had somehow found a way to contact them, and although there were multiple other possibilities, she couldn't help but let herself hope as they entered the turbolift.
"Bridge."
=/\=
Captain's Log, Stardate 51501.4. After two days at high warp, we're close enough to the relay station to see it on long-range visual sensors. Although it's too soon yet to get our hopes up, the optimism that Starfleet has found a way to get us home has spread through the crew faster than a plasma fire, and as a result spirits are high. I pray that this won't turn out to be yet another disappointment.
Sitting alone in her ready room, Kathryn pulled up the log she had made hours ago, staring at the last sentence as more thoughts than she could count whirled through her mind.
Her gaze kept flickering from her log to the PADD sitting on her desk, the PADD that contained a bittersweet letter from a man she had once been engaged to. She still didn't know how she felt about it.
She couldn't really be upset with Mark, especially since he had thought she was dead. She had expected him to have moved on with his life, just as she had after the death of her first fiancé, but expecting it and knowing it for a fact were different. She hadn't wanted to really think about the fact that she had been engaged twice and never married. Two failed attempts at love weren't exactly the thing to make a woman feel good about herself. Not that she really had much time to be a woman anymore, since she was basically the captain twenty-four hours a day.
With a deep sigh, she put all thoughts of Mark aside for the moment and tapped a button on her computer terminal to update her log.
Captain's Log, supplemental. We've been downloading the information from Starfleet for nearly four hours now, and although we haven't been able to access the coded message from Command yet, we have received what may be the biggest morale booster of all: letters from home. Nearly a third of the crew have received letters at this point, and although there is a mixture of both good and bad news in them, there is comfort in knowing that our family and friends know we are alive and well.
"Come in." Kathryn called out as a chime sounded, tapping keys to save her log at the same time.
Neelix entered hesitantly, his normally exuberant demeanor completely gone. "Captain."
She nodded in greeting, looking curiously at the two PADDS in his hands. "Another letter for me?"
"No Captain, sorry." Neelix danced from foot to foot nervously, and concern blossomed on Kathryn's face as she gave him her full attention.
"Is it bad news for someone?" She asked as she rose, holding out her hand for the PADDS. Tuvok had informed her that it seemed Neelix was reading some if not all of the messages as he delivered them, and although she had planned on reprimanding him the next time she saw him that was now the furthest thing from her mind.
Although most of the crew were reading their letters in private, they were being delivered to wherever they happened to be at the time they were received, and she could understand Neelix not wanting to deliver bad news to someone in the middle of a shift in case they read it there.
Neelix passed the letters back and forth between his hands, finally stuttering out, "Ah, well, it's not that it's bad news so much as, um… These are addressed to Ensign Bennet and Ensign Durst."
Kathryn sank back into her seat with a sigh, accepting the two PADDs as Neelix finally handed them to her. She spared a brief thought for both of the lost crewmen.
When they had sent the Doctor through the wormhole weeks ago, he had run into some issues on the other side and as a result only had a few minutes to speak with Starfleet Command before they had to send him back or risk not being able to get him back at all. The Doctor had told them of the death of her former XO and other senior officers, explained briefly how they had been brought to the Delta Quadrant and how the Maquis had joined the crew, but hadn't had time to communicate much besides that.
"I wasn't sure what else to do with them, Captain." Neelix said nervously. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright, Neelix." Kathryn said softly, realizing there would likely be more letters like this. "It's not like I've forgotten about them. Tell Seven to keep the letters for any deceased crewmen separate from the rest, and bring them directly to me. I'll use them to update the letters of regret I already have on file for their families."
"Of course, Captain." Neelix nodded sadly, leaving with his head down.
Kathryn sat staring at the door for long minutes, trying to let her mind go blank. She had known this was likely to happen, known the Doctor hadn't had time to give Starfleet a complete list of casualties, and she imagined how much more pain these families would go through when they found out that their loved ones were indeed dead as they had thought for years.
She felt her eyes beginning to fill as they had when she read Mark's letter, and this time her sorrow overwhelmed her composure and she felt a single tear slide down her cheek as the losses hit her again.
Although normally when grief like this hit she locked herself away in solitude until she had worked through it enough to hide it again, this time she had the overwhelming urge to call Chakotay. She needed a kind word, or a reminder that she wasn't alone in this. Hell, she needed a hug, but that had been true for years now.
She had just wiped the tears from her cheeks and raised a hand to her combadge when her door chimed. "Come in."
Seven marched in, speaking without preamble, "Captain, I'm beginning to have trouble accessing the datastream."
=/\=
Nearly an hour had passed, and Kathryn's thoughts were still a mess. She had been trying to study the relay system, but hadn't accomplished nearly as much as she would have liked.
They still hadn't received word from Seven and Tuvok, who had taken a shuttle to try and shore up the degrading datastream. Her thoughts oscillated between what was beginning to be worry over them, memories of Mark that were now almost bittersweet, and brief flashes of grief as the faces of deceased crew members haunted her.
She quickly settled her face into her command mask as her chime rang. "Come in."
"Looks like Tuvok and Seven pulled it off. The containment field has stabilized quite a bit. B'Elanna says she's downloading the letters a lot more easily now." Chakotay reported as he stood before her desk.
"That's good news." Kathryn said with a smile, forcing all thoughts but the relay station from her mind. They chatted about the shuttle and the station for a minute as she showed him what she had found about it, and she had finally managed to get her thoughts fully back on track as she crossed up towards her couch to fiddle with her tea set.
A simple question from him tossed her mind into chaos again. "You haven't mentioned your letter. Who was it from?"
"It was from Mark, the man I was engaged to. He told me about the litter of puppies my dog had, how he found homes for them, how devastated he was when Voyager was lost, how he held out hopes we were alive longer than most people did until he realized that he was clinging to a fantasy." Kathryn met his eyes, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. She wasn't really ready to talk about this yet, and especially not with him.
Chakotay watched her sympathetically, but didn't interrupt. He had thought he would be happy the day he learned she didn't consider herself to be with Mark anymore, but that was when he had thought it would be a decision she would come to on her own. The poorly masked sorrow in her voice told him where this was going.
Kathryn steadied her voice and continued in as unemotional a tone as she could manage, merely relating the facts as if they hadn't changed her whole world. "So he began living his life again. Meeting people, letting go of the past. About four months ago he married a woman who works with him. He's very happy."
Chakotay took a step closer to her, knowing she was hurting but not sure what to do about it. He tried to match her calm tone. "How do you feel about that?"
More sadness crept into her voice, although he could see acceptance in her eyes as well. Although they didn't really talk about it much, most of the crew had accepted months if not years ago that while spouses might stay faithful, fiancés or girlfriends would likely have moved on.
"Well, I knew he'd eventually move on with his life, but there was such a finality to that letter." Kathryn let her thoughts drift inward for an instant, and she could feel tears begin to pool in her eyes again. She desperately wanted to change the subject, unable to deal with the compassion in his eyes that made her want to fall into his arms, something that would surely prove disastrous. She was about to ask about his letter when she was paged.
"Kim to the captain. Can you come to the bridge?"
Chakotay held her eyes for a moment longer, unable to voice any of the things he wanted to say. She quietly moved past him towards the bridge, and he took a deep breath, promising himself that they would talk more about this when they had a chance, before following her out the doors. Plus as long as he concentrated on her, he didn't have to think about his own letter, or the looks on the faces of each of his former Maquis crewmembers when he had told them what it contained.
=/\=
TBC….
