Title: Lost
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: K+
Summary: A look at Chakotay's funeral in Admiral Janeway's timeline.
Disclaimer: The characters, universe, and plot belong to Paramount, not me.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Archiving: Anywhere.
Author's Note: For a dear friend, who I lost a long time ago.
The mourners filter away, in groups of two and three and four, some chatting in a quiet murmur, others reverently silent.
Some knew him only as a legend, a martyr – the freedom fighter who miraculously survived disaster after disaster, including his own capture – survived and flourished, only to be cut down in his prime, fulfilling his dream of returning home only as a corpse.
He didn't quite make it.
For some, he is a friend, a confidante. There are many to whom he was dear, and their grief shows in the silent tears running down their cheeks.
One figure, however, remains standing over the grave, hours after the others have gone. She stares blankly at the ground, long since filled in with dirt by the gravediggers. Her face shows no remorse, no grief, no longing, but the mask is practiced, rehearsed through years of difficult times, of losing more than one human being should ever lose.
Perhaps she does not deserve sympathy. After all, she has lost more than most people have ever had. Time and again, she has been offered amazing gifts, but very rarely accepted them. Most recently, she has been offered an admiralty, which she has yet to accept or reject. In general, she prefers to continue struggling, to be the tragic and solitary figure, the martyr among martyrs.
Now he has taken that away from her. He – not she – has made the ultimate sacrifice this time.
It infuriates her. But anger is not evident in her mien either; she has not yet decided whether she blames him, or whether she ought to blame herself.
She wonders if she ought to be upset, if she ought to cry, though she doubts she would remember how. She has seen too much, had her life too often turned upside down to react to much of anything with an outward display of emotion. It all seems so trivial.
Once, she might have reacted to his loss differently, but in truth, she lost him a long time ago. Whether he is alive or not is of very little consequence now.
This should be the ultimate insult, that he has chosen to be with his dead lover over the woman who he once claimed was his closest ally, his dearest friend, and that he loved so deeply he had to invent stories to tell her how he felt, for to tell the truth would be to open a wound so raw he surely could not survive any answer but total acceptance and reciprocation.
Deep down, she knows how he once felt, and that those feelings had been eradicated somewhere along the protracted journey home. Perhaps it had been before he took his young, blonde wife in his arms for the first time, or perhaps even then he'd been hoping to awaken a jealousy that would prompt her to attempt to win him back.
She'd been too jaded, even then, too hardened to admit she felt anything but happiness for them. Had a deep-seated envy prompted her to send his young wife on the mission that took her life? She'd deny it, but apparently he thought so.
After that, there was no going back. She knew he resented her, but she was too busy running a starship to deal with the politics of personal grudges. She knew he was professional enough to follow her orders, even if the affection he'd once felt for her had completely rotted into bitter hatred. It didn't matter how they felt about each other; they shared the goal to get home, and so logic, reason, and Starfleet training dictated that they would cordially unite in pursuit of that goal.
And get home they had – sort of. It was almost as if to share with her the joy of homecoming would be to dishonor the memory of his wife; to celebrate with the woman he had loved before would be to insult the woman he had loved after, or perhaps even to admit that he hadn't really loved her at all. She'd always suspected that his wife was but a tool to get her to admit her feelings, but stubbornness was something else they shared – she was too stubborn to admit his union hurt her, and he was too stubborn to admit he'd only done it to make her realize how she felt. Once she'd offered her blessing, he'd had to pretend it was always what he really wanted. In that way, his bride had been lucky – she hadn't survived long enough to feel the effects of a loveless marriage.
It seems to her that, having created his own quagmire, he'd opted for the easy way out. He'd provided his services right up until the end of the mission was in sight, then expired just before the fruits of their labor had been realized, his death portending their arrival, undermining the one celebration she had planned longer than any other.
It was revenge. How could she take pleasure in the homecoming without his presence beside her, sharing in the triumph?
But take pleasure she had, at least outwardly. She'd defied him, as he'd defied her. She'd made a show of drinking champagne and toasting the crew – including the dead – making it clear that she was nothing but overjoyed at their return.
Nobody questioned that she hadn't been seen shedding a single tear over his death. They hadn't seen her cry over any casualty among the crew; why should he be any different?
She wonders whether she should feel something other than a distant and smug sense that she has won. He may be glorified now as a martyr, but years later she is sure they will hardly remember him. She will be around to remind them of what she has accomplished; he will not. And even if he were to be credited with his achievements, he would not be present to revel in his exultation.
Yes, she has definitely won. The victory is hers, and hers alone.
She wonders whether she should rejoice in this revelation, and with only slight disappointment, realizes she has no desire for that either.
There are no tears, and there is no laughter. In a way, she is as dead as he is. She wonders when that happened. Was it the day she married them? Was it the day her protégé returned from an away mission just in time to die in his arms? Or was it later, after he showed no interest in letting her help him through his grief?
She remembers watching as tears began to trickle from his eyes onto the pale, still face of his recent bride. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it away. Feeling useless and rejected, she quietly exited the room, leaving him to his grief.
She tries to remember the last time he accepted her comfort, and finds it difficult to recall any instances at all. Perhaps, she reasons, it was long before his marriage that she lost him. Perhaps it was when she defied him and threw him in the brig for insubordination when she knew, deep down, that he was right. Or perhaps it was before that, when she rejected his wise counsel and opted for an alliance with the Borg. Perhaps he had even given up when she'd rejected him as her only option, the only time they'd been together free of the command structure and responsibility – two humans stranded alone on their own planet, thwarted by a microscopic virus.
It doesn't really matter. The only thing that is certain is that his death is not a tragedy to her; it was an inevitability, and as such, she finds it difficult to feel much of anything about it at all.
Truthfully, she cannot remember feeling much of anything about anything lately. She is a talented actress, and as such was easily able to convince the world of her happiness at returning to her home after twenty-three long years lost in space.
The one person that could see through her façade lies still, six feet underground below her feet, never again available to attempt to counsel her.
She is truly alone now. It occurs to her that it would be okay to cry, for nobody is around to see her tears. Yet she does not desire to mourn. She wants to move on, though to what, she does not know.
Briefly, she contemplates digging through the loose dirt, opening the coffin, and lying at his side until she joins him in oblivion. She almost laughs at the melodrama her mind is capable of producing.
The sun has long since set, and still she stands over the grave, waiting for the tears that will not come. Someday, perhaps, there will be something that will mean enough to her that she will be able to cry over its loss.
Or perhaps the rest of her life will be spent searching for such a thing, and she will die, like he did, without quite achieving her ultimate goal.
She feels a gentle tap on her arm. Someone has returned to retrieve her.
It is time to return to reality. She sighs imperceptibly, nodding at her companion and glancing back at the grave one last time as she follows him to the waiting hovercar.
Perhaps he is the lucky one after all, not having to pretend any longer. Perhaps she has lost after all, and he is laughing at her from wherever he is now.
She wishes she could cry, but there is nothing left that is worth her tears.