A/N: Prompt fic #2 from and for my talented but semi-evil friend MiaCooper who requested: "I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else."
Sabotages a la Mia: Must contain a J/other OR C/other kissing scene (I may have done both-ish), AND a J/C scene that bumps the rating to at least M, preferably E (yeah, you get M-ish).
After disposing of two partial responses totaling about 6500 words, I finally managed something decent after hearing Christina Perri's "Lonely." She saved my ass. Unbeta'd.
Also, I see Mia's ambiguous ending (see her fic: A Hundred Little Things) and raise her ambiguous characters and circumstances. Choose your own reality, any one of them will do.
They've been telling her that he is dead. Because most days it's easier for her to take than the truth.
It's easier than dealing with the screaming and confusion when they try to get her to understand what has really happened.
It's less painful for everyone involved. They lie. And she has stopped asking for honesty.
Tuvok comes on Wednesdays and Sundays promptly at twelve-noon. She has a calendar she keeps on her wall and a clock on her nightstand with an alarm to remind her, because she loves when he visits. No, she realizes. 'Loves' isn't the right word. Craves. She craves Tuvok.
He's the only one that can really help her now. He's the only one she remembers with consistency. She missed his call once, a while ago, and she still hasn't forgiven herself. That's why she sets the alarm.
On Wednesday mornings, like this one, they serve sweet rolls in the cafeteria. She eats half of one then tucks the other half away for a special reason. Sometimes she forgets why exactly, and it rots in the corner by the vase of flowers. Her social worker, his name is something strange that she can never remember, has to discard the food when she forgets and she feels badly about that.
After savoring her breakfast of bread and decaf coffee – no stimulants allowed here – she returns to her room where she selects a book from her shelf to read and settles into her chair. But on Wednesdays and Sundays she can't concentrate on the words. She is thinking about Tuvok. She's wondering which secrets from her past he's going to unlock today. It will be a brief reprieve from the reality of what her life has become. She will forget the details soon after he leaves, but she clings to the way the memories make her feel.
What should she search for today, she wonders as she sips her hot drink? Something frightening perhaps (some days that's what she craves). Or maybe something fun (revisiting the luau is a particular favorite). Or maybe, just maybe, this will be the day she finally breaks through and finds what she's been searching for.
She knows there are memories, long since repressed. She's been told they exist. Her soul still bares the mark of his touch, of his love. The one who's name shall not be spoken in her presence but whom she longs for with such reckless abandon it's hard to understand.
The memories are distant and just out of reach. But they're there. They have to be. Maybe today she will finally be allowed to revisit them. This is her silent prayer each week on Wednesday and Sunday mornings.
She's not sure how much longer Tuvok will continue to come to help her. Even she has been able to perceive a change in him as of late. His age is finally showing and though she feels badly for the stress she adds to his life, she needs him. And she won't tell him not to come.
Maybe, today will be the day, she hopes. But first, she must pick the raisins from her half of a sweet roll and scatter them around on the table so they match the stars in the night sky.
No one really knows what caused her to lose her grip on reality so rapidly and so completely. Not the doctors, or the counselors, or her friends. "Sometimes the mind just breaks," someone had told him. "She's been through so much throughout the years," they had reasoned.
And maybe that was true. But he knows why. He knows exactly why. And he will never, ever forgive himself for the fact that this was his fault. Moreover, he won't forgive himself for not having recognized the signs of her decline sooner - for not having been there. He will live with that guilt until the day he dies. Because, if nothing else, despite all differences and problems, they loved each other. They were tethered together in a way that seem inescapable, though at times, torturous due to other incompatibilities. But there was always love.
Regardless, they'd had a falling out. After years, nay decades of tension and frustration and on-again off-again passion it was bound to happen. Actually, it had happened before - several times in fact - most notably right before their divorce.
But this time was different. This time, he took things a step too far. She pushed him away and he swore it was going to be for the last time. He stormed out of her apartment, down the hall and didn't look back.
He doesn't know what she did in the months after that. He assumes she was working - ordering captains and ensigns to far corners of the unknown. Sending them to their deaths, as she had begun to refer to it. And for the most part, she was working. But she was also suffering. She was finally breaking.
Ninety-seven days, three hours and twenty-two minutes after their final argument (she knows because she was keeping track), she saw him on a street corner in front of a nice restaurant. She was dragging herself home from her office for a few hours of sleep and a shower. He was clad in blue dress pants and a crisp, white shirt. He was waiting for someone, clearly. And it wasn't her.
She stopped, stared. A cloud drifted across the sky, blocking the sun. Her world began to crumble around her.
The woman who approached him (it had to be him) had long, dark hair. Her eyesight was beginning to blur by now but she saw the hair. It should have been blonde.
She wore a tight eggplant-colored dress. High heels. No, she was naturally that tall.
Silver bangles and rings only on one hand. Fitting like a glove. A glove. Too much like a glove….
Her ears started to sing. She hadn't had enough to eat that day. Without him to remind her, she hadn't had enough to eat for months. Her uniform was so hot. So heavy. She had to get it off. And so she removed her jacket and discarded it on the ground.
And then he was laughing. And the woman was laughing. Who said something funny? She had to know. No. They were laughing at her. She was the joke.
She rubbed closed her eyes. When she opened them he had the woman pressed up against the side of the building. Her long leg was lifted around his waist.
No. He'd never. I must be imagining this.
But yet, in one way or another, she was seeing her worst nightmare play out before her eyes. On the street corner, at the end of a long day, she witnessed the end to life as she had known it.
She grew hotter and shed her tunic, retaining only her tank-top. Crumpling, the garment fell on top of her jacket.
Just before she blacked out she swore she saw it all.
"My mind to your mind."
She closes her eyes, feels the press of dark fingertips into familiar spots on her face.
"My thoughts to your thoughts."
She steadies her breath and tries to push the torrent of confusion from her damaged mind.
"Take me to where you most want to be," he says. "To a place where you were most contented."
She should be embarrassed by the things she is searching for. She knows her friend can see it all. She forces images into her head, ones that are fake but hopefully close enough to ignite a spark of what might be true.
She's searching and he's helping. He resigned himself years ago that someday they would arrive at what she most wanted. He's prepared for it. And honestly, he wants nothing more than to do this for her.
She is just about to give up in the darkness, to settle on something she's already seen a dozen times before when she perceives a note. It is a sigh. And it's coming from her own lips.
Thick, strong hands are wrapping around her, she's spinning. The sensation is overwhelming. Then she knows, she's dancing.
His face is warm and smiling and he looks at her with pure love in his eyes. She slows her feet and her skirt swings around her legs, soft and cool. There are others in the room but she doesn't care. She reaches up and touches his face and then he kisses her.
Suddenly, she's being pulled. Dragged. She's falling onto a soft bed, the dress is no longer draped around. Her skin is pale and flawless. Her breasts covered by his hand and his mouth. She rolls her head back onto satin sheets and moans.
A whisper from reality wafts in. This was our first time.
His hands roam with purpose and precision. They trace and learn every place on her while making her sing out for more. Her own fingers are just as eager. She's gripping and feeling the muscles of his arm. She's on top now, sucking at sweet spot of his neck by his collarbone. He smells like bourbon and desire.
"So long…." he whispers in her ear. "I've been waiting for you for so long."
His mouth has already had her, she knows. She's already been rippled through with pleasure several times over. But it's not enough and so she flattens her palm on his chest and slides down, pressing over ribs and heartbeats and strong hip bones until she finds him firm and waiting in her hand.
She shifts her weight and considers teasing them both but knows there will be time for that later. Now, she wants him, all of him. She has earnedhim. He's the only prize she's never claimed.
They are one for such a short time it's almost torturous in its brevity especially considering how long they have waited. When they finally peel apart, she begins to laugh. Her hair falls on his chest, his hand on her face. And she thinks that nothing has ever been so perfect before this.
"I love you," she says, and he's about to say it back. She can hear him take the breath. She can feel his mouth open again her neck….
But the spell is broken. The fantasy (or was it reality?) shatters around her.
"Tuvok!" she gasps. "I….. Oh." She wilts down into his chest, exhausted.
He holds her tight while she shudders and weeps. "I was right. It happened," she sobs.
"Yes," he confirms. "Was this the memory you have been searching for?"
She nods, weak with the release of long-sought emotion. "I was happy. I've been happy. We were…." She looks up at him, fear sets across her features once again. "We were together…. But where? When? I just had it, oh God. Tuvok. I just had it and…. It's slipping away. I'm losing it again." She buries her face in her hands. "But I was happy…."
"Indeed, Kathryn. You were."
"Is he gone Tuvok, tell me the truth please? Is he dead, is he really gone."
"He is…. no longer available to you in the way you desire."
"Is it because of me?" she needs to know.
"Blame is irrelevant. It is for the best."
She meets his eyes, wipes her tears and summons a strength that she has been told comes from years of being a hardened leader. She is a shell of that person now, stripped of rank and sanity. But if nothing else, the strength remains.
"Thank you," she says.
And he leaves her to her well-read books.
"How is she today?" He asks Tuvok in the hallway.
"Her condition has not changed noticeably in the last six years," the Vulcan replies. "And today is no different."
"Thank you for coming."
"Each week you thank me, Captain. And each week I remind you that I do this for my friend. And not for you."
"I know. But still."
Tuvok regards him with a disciplined nod and then moves to leave. Then he pauses. "You may be interested to know, however, that we were able to partially retrieve the memory she has been searching for."
"You have?" he asks, hesitation mixed with hope sings in his voice.
"Indeed."
His breath grows still. "And?"
"And for a brief time, she remembered how happy you made her. We will revisit it on Sunday."
He closes his eyes and sighs. When he opens them, Tuvok is gone.
The social worker enters promptly fifteen minutes after Tuvok leaves, just as he always does. He sits and asks, "Did you have breakfast this morning Kathryn? Did you enjoy your visit with Tuvok?"
Dim light from the sconce on the wall illuminates a marking on the visitor's forehead and for an instant – for one fleeting iota of a second – she swears it's him. She would have bet her life on it – that is, if she felt her life were still worth anything in a bet.
"It's… It's you!" she cries and in three long strides she's across the room. She throws herself into his lap and clasps her hands behind his neck. She pulls him down and kisses him hungrily on his waiting, grateful lips.
For a moment, it is just as she remembered.
And then. It's completely different.
She pulls back and scrambles away, nearly tripping and falling over the table.
"I… I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else," she says, retreating into the far corner. She sinks to the floor in shame and hides her face in her hands. All she wants is to crawl into a hole and be forgotten again.
"It's okay Kathryn," the man says. It sounds like him too, she thinks. The way he says my name.
"No. No!" she shouts. Then she quiets. "No, it's really not. I might be losing my mind but I shouldn't –"
"I said, it's fine." There is a long pause before she can bring herself to look up at him again. When she does, he smiles kindly at her. His dimples peek through and once again she's reminded of…. but no. It's not him. By now the similarities are becoming easier to dispel.
"This probably happens to you a lot," she says, hoping she's not the only one in this place to mistake her social worker for a loved one.
"It does," he lies.
She lowers her head, still feeling shameful. "It won't happen again," she whispers. "Please, don't stop coming to see me."
She looks at him and feels as though he is restraining himself from speaking. He takes in her gaunt features, cheeks sunken with stress and time. Then he collects the half of a raisin sweet roll from behind the vase in the corner.
"Okay if I take this?" he asks.
"Yes. I'm sorry that they don't pay you enough for you to buy your own food," she says quietly.
"I appreciate that you save some for me. You're the only one that does."
"Does your family go hungry?" she asks.
"I don't have a family."
She looks at him with a furrowed brow. Then she slowly rises to walk back to where he is. "I'm sorry,' she says. "You look like the kind of man who should have a family."
He bows his head and swallows around the lump in his throat. "I had one once. But it didn't work out."
"Well. We can be alone together. If you'll keep coming to see me," she hints again, hopeful.
"I will always come to see you," he vows. "I'll be back tomorrow, Kathryn. Enjoy your book."
"It's a good one," she says quickly, before he can leave. She bends to the table and picks it up, tracing the well-worn cover with her fingertips. "Dante. He writes about hell. Have you read it?"
He nods.
"Sometimes, I think that's where I'm living. I'm afraid it's all I've ever known."
"It's not," he assures.
She trusts him. He's never lied to her. And so, she decides to believe him.
"Goodbye, Kathryn."
Then he leaves her alone again.
"Where was I?" she mutters, sitting in her chair. She opens the book to the place which has been marked by a strip of red cloth. "Ah, Canto VIII."
She rests her head back, holds the book into the air and begins to read aloud.
"Now was the hour which longing backward bends. In those that sail, and melts their heart in sighs. The day they have said farewell to their sweet friends…."