From the Author -
"I am working on L'Encore, but I couldn't help writing this. It's been swirling around in my head for awhile now, and though I'm reluctant to get it all down on paper (because I really am entirely too lazy for my own good), I wanted to write this short, COMPLETE, story, about an OC's death impacting Janeway. Takes place during Endgame, Part II."
An Admiral's Regret
"Seven of Nine is going to die."
"What?"
A vicious jolt of satisfaction shot through the Admiral as she watched her counterpart visibly reel. "Three years from now, she'll be injured on an away mission. She'll make it back to Voyager, and die in the arms of her husband."
"Husband?
"Chakotay."
The Admiral blew out a harsh breath, struggling to maintain her composure. "I know what's going to happen."
Her younger self, however, was having none of it. "I can avoid it."
Damn her lofty ideals! "Seven isn't the only one."
X X X X
"Between this day - and the day I got Voyager home - I lost twenty-two crew members."
Kathryn's ready retort died on her lips, her momentary shock managing to crack her legendary control, allowing her horror to seep through. It penetrated the icy shield of her eyes for but a moment before she had willed it back inside her, but she needn't have bothered. The Admiral was visibly shaken at having to reveal the terrible truth, having sat down on the Ready Room couch, unable to look anywhere but the floor as she relived each time she had had to blow the final whistle for one of her crew members. Her curiosity at odds with her sense of compassion, Kathryn couldn't help herself.
"Who?" she asked in a ragged voice.
But her older self appeared to be oblivious to her question, instead staring into the floor, her gaze lost in time. Just as Kathryn was about to push for answers, the Admiral held up her hand, signaling her wish for silence. Anxiously biting her tongue, Kathryn decided to use her time to think on her visitor's revelations. Still reeling from the one-two punch of Seven's death and marriage - Don't you mean who she was married to? an insidious voice asked, before being ruthlessly thrust away - Kathryn was almost afraid of what else her counterpart might have to say, who else she had had to bury...who else she would have to bury...
"Who else?"
In a sudden, restless desperation, the Admiral stood with almost painful correctness, her quick, jerky strides as she began to pace the room telling volumes about her state of mind. You stupid woman, she railed at herself as years - decades, really - of painful memories resurfaced. Can't you just accept what I tell you without asking any of these meaningless questions...
"Who else?" Kathryn said again. Instead of answering, the older Janeway came to stop beside one of the viewports, her stance rigid and her hands clasped behind her back as she stared out at the distant, unfeeling stars. When she did speak, her normally throaty voice had grown hoarse and rough, as though she were fighting back tears.
"You remember the Fen Domar I mentioned earlier?" The Admiral's venom seemed to swell, gathering force until as she finally turned to her younger counterpart, the desperation, the wretched misery, the sheer agony of the past thirty years...of this Kathryn's own future...seemed to have ignited a blazing fire within the older woman, causing her to nearly-glow in righteous wrath.
"They were nothing to their brother-tribe, the Fen Gashi." The Admiral was unable to keep the bitter loathing from her voice, so potent were the depths of her hate. Not even their complete annihilation had placated her thirst for vengeance. "It wasn't just our favorite coffee-cup that was destroyed."
The intensity of the Admiral's voice foreboded nothing good to Kathryn's mind. Not even the Borg had done enough to deserve such hatred. Then what...Suddenly, she knew - Kathryn Janeway knew - that she didn't want to hear anymore.
"That was when we lost Jessica."
A knife seemed to have sliced cleanly into Kathryn's heart, her brain seeming to shut down as it tried to process what had just been said.
That was when we lost Jessica.
When we lost Jessica.
We lost Jessica.
Lost Jessica.
Jessica.
For a moment, Kathryn was tempted to laugh in the Admiral's face, the idea was too ludicrous, too insane, too painful to even imagine. But we've lost so many...we will lose so many...Joe Carey...Seven...Chakotay...Was it so impossible to believe? Life in the Delta Quadrant had never been kind to Voyager's crew, forcing them to deal with life-and-death situations on a day-to-day basis, leaving them exhausted and drained from just managing to survive. No, as loathe as she was to admit it, losing Jessica, her first surrogate daughter, painful and devastating though it would be, was not impossible. No, Kathryn realized, the question was, would her older self have used her reaction to manipulate her into the decision she wanted herself to make? From what she had seen already, that was entirely likely. The Admiral's behavior thus far had shown her to be as equally capable of coercion as she was of manipulation. But the way she was holding herself now, the depth of emotion she had shown when talking about Seven...about Chakotay...
"H-how?" At her counterpart's hesitant question, the Admiral laughed bitterly, nearly choking from the fresh pain that accompanied her memories of the Caldeen's death. Bowing her head, the rigidity of her stance - if possible - hardened even more.
"We had just escaped from the Fen Domar...we hadn't known we'd crossed into Fen Gashi space...one day we were attacked by pirates...Pirates! Of all things!" For a moment, the Admiral seemed to have gone off on a tangent, shaking her head at the irony. Kathryn suddenly knew what she was thinking: Jessica had been fascinated by the pirate tales of Earth...it seemed so long ago that the two of them had sat around the crackling fireplace in Sparrow House on the Holodeck, taking turns making up fantastical adventures...
"Two of our crew were taken prisoner...Ayala and Dalry," the Admiral continued, her eyes closed as she relived the moments of that horrifying day once again, "We immediately were in pursuit, giving as good as we got in the firefight...when suddenly Jessica was gone from the Bridge, and Ayala and Dalry in her place."
Kathryn was held spellbound, unable to move, unable to breathe as she listened to her counterpart's tale. The older Janeway's eyes flew open suddenly, startling the younger Captain. And what Kathryn saw terrified her: her eyes...her own eyes...dead, save for the spark of hatred in their depths, impossibly hard and as impenetrable as granite rock.
"Voyager ended up being taken over by Fen Gashi." The Admiral swallowed visibly, almost overcome with nausea at the memory of her surrogate daughter's death. Her eyes, already impossibly hard, grew even more shadowed and embittered with pain, and the younger Kathryn knew without a doubt she did not want to hear anymore. When she tried to stand, however, the Admiral pierced her with the deadliest glare Kathryn had ever received in her entire life. My God, is this what my crew sees when I give them an order? Kathryn shivered involuntarily. Then again, she's had thirty more years to perfect it, she thought.
"They separated us, placed us in isolated holding cells. I thought they were going to kill us all," the older Janeway said in a dead voice, "They set up a video-feed in the back of our enclosure. Afterward, I was told that they had done the same in all the cells...They used her to get to us, to get us to tell them how we had slipped past the Fen Domar into their territory. Apparently, they wanted to launch an attack on the other tribe, and we were their way in. And Jessica was their leverage."
"Jessica would never allow herself to be used as leverage." Kathryn had found her voice. The Admiral nodded in her direction before continuing her story.
"No, she wouldn't, I knew that, Chakotay knew that, the whole crew knew that. And so we kept silent." The older woman paused for a moment, needing to collect her thoughts, breathing in deeply, before she spoke again, her voice once more rough and hoarse.
"They tortured her," she whispered, blind to anything and everything save for the images burned into her mind, "Forcing us to watch as they cut off her fingers and toes. Then her legs. Then her arms. Jessica was crying, screaming in pain, screaming for us to not give in. The Gashi were infuriated, and began working on her other extremities, like her ears, her nose, her breasts...
"It was the last mistake the Fen Gashi would ever make," the Admiral said, her voice quiet, "The crew managed to overpower the Gashi soldiers and retake Voyager, but they were too late to save Jessica."
"I watched-" words seemed to fail her for a moment, her emotions getting the better of her as she choked out, "I watched as when she was no more than a bloody stump...They cut off her head."
Both Janeways were silent, one lost the in the agony of her memories, the other shattered by the horrifying future lying ahead of her surrogate daughter.
"I failed her," the Admiral said at last, her eyes hard and unyielding, "I failed her, and she had to pay the price." The older woman's voice was nearly desperate to make her counterpart understand. "As Chakotay was never the same after Seven's death, you will never be the same after Jessica's."
"And the others?"
At that, Admiral Kathryn Janeway had had enough. "Isn't that enough, captain?"
The other woman flinched, unaccustomed to such venomous rage directed at herself, unable to do more than simply stand as the hurricane that had descended into her Ready Room. Whirling around to face her younger self, her anger and despair seemed to freeze the Captain in place. The Admiral knew what was going on in her counterpart's mind, and knew what she had to do. For the first time in years, Admiral Kathryn Janeway allowed the barriers behind her eyes to fall, letting her younger self know exactly the kind of chance she was risking to take. The results staggered the Captain. Kathryn Janeway did not show emotion. Kathryn Janeway did not show fear. Kathryn Janeway did not show pain. Especially not the amount of soul-shattering anguish that burned in the Admiral's eyes...the agony of a lost love, the suffering of a friend betrayed, and the gut-clenching agony of a mother whose daughters had been ripped from her arms, not once, but twice.
Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, Kathryn Janeway felt more than cool, professional concern, more than vague interest and automatic responses. How many men and women had this woman had to bury since this moment, how many letters to their loved ones, how many battles had she seen, atrocities had she done and had had done to her crew? Just as suddenly the Admiral's fury evaporated, her strength draining as she sat on the couch once more, her head in her hands. Silence reigned for a few long minutes before the Admiral spoke again, her head raised and her gaze as hard and clear as crystal glass.
"Even if you alter Voyager's route, limit your contact with alien species, you're going to lose people," she said in a steady voice, her eyes screaming DO YOU UNDERSTAND? "But I'm offering you a chance to get all of them home, safe and sound, today. Are you really going to walk away from that?"
Finis.
So, what'd you think? Ironically enough, I wrote this while listening to Hayley Westenra's Dark Waltz. Somehow, I don't think it was meant for a piece like this.