LITTLE INDIANA
He dreamed again, of her. Of her smile that transformed her austere features, hair that fell loosely over her shoulders, glinting in the dappled rays of the sun that had broken through the morning, the skirt of her dress fluttering gently about her ankles.
She was his woodland sprite, darting from their shelter to the rock pools they'd discovered, to her precious seedlings that had gleefully abandoned their pods and sprung to life. She'd raise her face to the sun and breathe the air of the morning.
It gave him hope, the dreaming, and he had tried to capture each dream, each image of her and the things that surrounded her.
"You must see Indiana one day," she had told him once in a moment of quiet reflection. "Oh, we're still so far from home, Chakotay!"
"Did you not say yourself that home is only a memory away, dearest Kathryn?"
"I did, didn't I? I forget to - to - "
Her face had become sad, not like Pagliacci the clown she'd told him about with his drooping red mouth and long tear drop. Just in the way her eyes darkened. In her quarters that had become his too, he had touched her hand gently and it seemed the tender caress dispelled her momentary gloom.
"We always hope, my love," he'd told her. "It keeps us alive, keeps us from despairing…"
"Who knows," she replied with sudden, renewed faith as she guided his hand to her belly, "our son might be born there!"
Little did they know that their hope, chasing despair into their dark, unwanted corners, would be rewarded, for hardly had a month passed than they arrived home.
"Tell me about Indiana then, sweet Kathryn," he'd urged.
"At Christmas time Indiana is beautiful. Not even the holodeck can quite replicate the atmosphere, the exhilaration which fills your entire being when you decorate your tree, place gifts under it, perch the star atop, the magic of the birth of a coming child, voices of angels singing - "
"Do you know how your face lights up when you speak of Indiana, Kathryn?"
"And then the snow! When you stand by the great window in the lounge, you watch the snow tumbling to the earth, and if you look hard enough you can even see the shapes of the flakes. It is dead quiet, and the silence fills your whole being! It is like watching a moving picture with no sound, just like that, Chakotay. And you could stand there by the window, almost forever, to watch our Indiana winter."
He couldn't help smile through his pain when he remembered Kathryn that day, how Indiana became alive through her narrative, her face animated and her hands always gesticulating, always telling a story all its own. And he imagined Indiana through Kathryn's eyes, her voice gone soft with remembrance, imagined walking with her along the stream that flowed through the property, imagined hearing the water tumbling over rocks, so beautiful. He imagined her strolling barefoot, sandals dangling from her fingers, carefree, and always the smile that radiated from her.
"I'd like to see your home when it's winter time, perhaps your Christmas celebration with your family," he'd said.
"Even the dogs lie quietly near the tree anticipating their Christmas treat," she'd said. "It's so quiet on Christmas Eve, a hallowed silence with snow gleaming in the pale moonlight and angels bending near the Earth.
"Huh?" He'd knitted his brows in confusion. "Angels in the snow?"
"Yes, from an ancient carol. My grandmother used to sing it. Angels touching the earth with their harps of gold."
"It sounds very, very beautiful."
"It is, my love."
He dreamed of her often, even in his waking moments, so that all horror and dread and the interminable waiting and creeping despair could merge into the darkened walls, always dark! And thinking of her would illuminate his world and against the walls he would use his hands to drive away the gloom.
He heard footsteps. He knew them by now. Hard, thumping and impatient. Then followed a voice. A panel at the base of the door slid open. A bowl pushed through. The voice was cold, hard. He had lost sense of time and yet, even so, the voice never changed - always the same: uncompromising, cruel and without compassion. Once, the owner of the voice told him that if he didn't eat, they know he'd be dead.
Long after the beatings, long after the humiliation, long after the solitude, long after the deprivation, the breaking of bones, the trauma to his body, long after the fight had gone from him - was it weeks, months, years? - he clung tenaciously to Hope, to imaginings of the one who kept him alive, to thinking of angels that bent near the earth.
So he lay on the cold, hard ground, trembling fingers painting trees, birds in flight, the homestead of Kathryn's Indiana, the stream she always enthused about, the great oak tree not fifty metres away from the house where the swing gently swayed in the breeze. He painted Kathryn sitting on the porch, looking up as he approached. And he would created little stories, legends really, and his lips would move as he recounted each tale for her. Even in his darkest moments, his body ravaged by illness and suffering, he began talking - broken, stilted sentences that created light in his heart, so that even then, he could experience joy.
Once the guard came in.
"Who are you talking to?" he'd demanded gruffly.
When Chakotay didn't respond, the heavy boot connected with his chest. He endured the onslaught, made not a sound again and pictured Indiana through Kathryn's eyes, her kindness, her smile, the glint of sun in her hair until her image faded from his consciousness. He would wake up later and wonder how much time had passed.
And every time he awoke from the stupors of his murky world, his fingers found the oak tree and the swing, and the river with its water rushing impatiently over rocks, and the love seat Kathryn promised they'd sit together, and the moon on a starless night and the angels that touched the ground. And all around him trees rose and stood tall against the stark cold, bright moonlight. And he would trace words on the ground with fingers gone numb with pain and cold.
I love you, Kathryn…
Darkness descended on him as he lay, exhausted, unable to move, unable to break through and dream of her. Chakotay began to quiver with fear, for it seemed to him that Hope began to fade, to ease from his mind and his heart and his soul and allow despair to fill the places left by Hope and Joy.
For a moment an aperture appeared in which he imagined he heard a voice that called him.
"Chakotay…"
"Kathryn…"
Tears were never far from Kathryn Janeway as she sat by Chakotay's side in the medical bay of the New Voyager. He looked much better than the sick, abused, broken man that had been transported to sick bay. His colour improved, bones reset and healed, his emaciated and frail body whole again. He had woken up on the floor of the annex, tired eyes connecting with hers.
"Kathryn…"
Then his eyes closed, a deep sigh emitting from him before he lost consciousness again.
There would be time enough to reflect over the Federation's relaxed stance against Chakotay. All her rage had already been spent against men and women like Hays, Gordon and Nechayev, but right now she was just happy that Chakotay was alive, that he survived the horror of Cardassian jails. His survival was nothing short of miraculous, judging by the litany of injuries he'd sustained.
Her former crew had remained on standby over the years, always assuring her that they would be ready to leave their respective posts to bring Commander Chakotay home. Kathryn shook her head. Major diplomatic machinations had finally resulted in Chakotay being freed, the Federation promising to make restitution. Within days sixty percent of her crew reported for duty. New Voyager would reach Earth two days before Christmas.
The Cardassians were forced to release Chakotay at last, offering no objections when New Voyager appeared in orbit of the planet where he was held prisoner. His lifeless body had been dragged to an annex where she'd been told to wait. Chakotay was literally dumped in front of her. They had no more need of him, they declared; he was of no use to them anymore. Kathryn had absolutely no illusions about what they'd done to him.
Assured by their EMH that her husband was in safe hands, she demanded to be taken to the cell in which he had been kept prisoner for more than seven years. Even now, as she caressed her husband's roughened cheek, she could not explain her behaviour, the desire to see where he had been held. What had she hoped to see or experience? Yet something, an instinct to see the cell carried her there.
It was a revelation, Kathryn thought, as she relived her experience in the Cardassian prison.
"This is the cell," the dour Cardassian guard informed her.
Her eyes narrowed as she turned to him. "Leave me now," she ordered. The guard wavered a second or two before reluctantly retreating down the corridor.
Then she turned and entered. Her eyes adjusted to the pitch dark, the only light from a small square window high up in the wall.
Kathryn gasped sharply. Images, illuminated by the sheer force of gazing at the walls, began slowly to take shape. She saw an oak tree with a swing captured in mid-air, a child laughing with pure delight. And water darting over rocks of a stream that meandered through a landscape so familiar to her. There was a farmhouse against one wall, and clear as day the swaying love seat on the porch.
Unaware of tears streaming down her cheeks, she recognised every landmark, even seven angels with unfurled wings bending near the earth, stars on a cloudless night with a pale moon. There was snow seen from the lounge through the wide windows, deep snow through which two dogs bounded. And in the lounge, a fire breathing in the hearth, a Christmas tree, a rocking chair with a mother and baby…
She had seen enough paintings in her life to understand that an impression alone could strike a chord of familiarity, one that rendered an image in perfect resemblance of a time, an instant, a day, a bird on a tree, a rocking chair, a dog frolicking in snow.
Everything had become magically alive inside with only a small window at the top of the cell for air, a floor that was not rally a floor but loose, sandy ground. There was not a part of the wall up to where Chakotay's hands reached above his head to paint, that was not used. Every centimetre was a memory of their life on Voyager and mostly, her recounting of Indiana for him, her promise that she'd show him her home one day. Details even she had forgotten, like a mobile over a crib, one of the pieces a replica of the Sacajawea.
It was little Indiana on the walls of a prison cell.
"And I shall remember you, Kathryn, and everything you have told me about your life, and your home in Indiana. They will be alive in my memories, because they will keep me alive, they will be my hope…"
The words Chakotay breathed against her just before the Cardassians took him away.
Had Chakotay had paint and brushes and pens to eternalise the images on the walls, anyone would have understood. But there were no brushes lying around, no pens, no charcoal, no paints, no dyes.
Kathryn wept.
Chakotay had used the only medium he had at his disposal - his own blood, every time he was beaten senseless and bleeding.
He had vowed to remember her, remember her promise to him
Looking at him now, so at peace, his hand in hers, she gave a little sob as she renewed her vow to him
To show him Indiana, to introduce him to the son he had never seen, to make them a family again on Christmas day.
END