Disclaimer: Paramount clearly owns all the characters. Copyright: Paramount
AN: Big thank you to northernexposure for her speedy beta read. Reviews/comments obviously welcome.
One step away
He steps out in front of her.
He is always behind her, just slightly behind her, where she expects him to be. Where she needs him. If only he'd stayed there where he belongs. She doesn't want this. She never asked for this. Better it were her.
But he steps out and that's enough to put him one step away from her now forever.
She sees it coming, the blast of light. She watches in slow motion as Ayala launches himself at the tall alien. Ayala had been only a metre or so behind the assassin. But the alien keeps his eye on her throughout and manages to discharge his weapon before her security officer can bring him crashing to the ground.
She watches the bolt coming towards her frame by frame as time slows down. The fizzling purple spark is startlingly beautiful, like an exotic alien firework. But it is a primitive missile. Even as it hurtles towards her, her brain questions why someone on this planet whose technology is decades, centuries even, in advance of her own would have need of such barbaric arms.
As soon as she sees it, she knows in that instant that there's no time. And just as she accepts that, Chakotay's body is suddenly in front of her. He must have begun to move out from behind her the instant the alien revealed the weapon.
The force of the blast blows Chakotay back against her and they fall to the ground together. She struggles out from under his dead weight to kneel over his prostrate body, now sprawled in the dust. She grabs his right hand and presses it against the wound with her own too small hand in a vain attempt to cover the hole in his chest. The hole is too big, even for both their hands together. She wrestles off her jacket and stuffs it into the wound, barking orders to get medical help, although anyone can see it's already far too late. The hole in his chest is too deep, too wide. There is too much blood. The alien weapon must have blasted away the larger part of his heart.
This is all wrong. Everything about it is wrong. The blood all over their entwined hands is wrong. His cheek growing ever cooler beneath the fingers of her other hand is wrong.
It's wrong that the colour is fast draining from his bronze skin.
His eyes are open, registering no pain. He is beyond pain. He watches her as the tears begin to fall from her eyes. She witnesses his lips move to try to form his last word. It is the soundless last word of the billions of words he will never say now, and it silently joins all the other words she'd never let him say. This final inaudible utterance is all wrong. She doesn't even know what it is he says. No last words to pass on. Pass on to whom? To his family? He has a sister, she thinks. A sister she's never met. And a cousin. In Ohio.
The light fading from his eyes is wrong. Those dark eyes that conceal so much will never follow her around a room again. He'll never stand behind her again, her silent wall, her protector, her strength. She will have to stand tall without him now. Alone. Brittle. All because of this one last step.
She whimpers. She pleads with him. Begs him to stay. But he just stares, his eyes now dull stones, his sculpted lips still.
She lays her head on his shoulder, her hand still cupping his cooling cheek, her other hand still stuck to his with his blood. She closes her eyes and weeps and weeps.
She repeats his name, "Chakotay, no! Chakotay, no!" as something inside her dies along with him. And then she repeats her apology over and over. "Chakotay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It's all she can think to say.
She feels a creeping, distantly familiar desperation that brings with it inescapable cold; inevitable, pervasive and freezing cold.
This is all wrong. It isn't supposed to be like this. All that constant effort to keep him one step away, the constant tension of all that denial. And for what? In that instant she realises the enormity of her miscalculation. However far away she'd kept him it was always going to feel like this.
No one attempts to move her for several seconds. Then Paris asks her something, his tone urgent. She senses he wants something. He wants her to say yes. So she says yes. She has no idea what he has asked. She becomes aware that her brain has ceased to function in its usual fashion. She doesn't care.
The small group are all transported somewhere – somewhere unfamiliar. She feels even colder.
Paris carefully peels her off Chakotay's fast cooling body. He prizes their bloody fingers apart. He turns her around, forcing her eyes to let go of the better part of her soul. He points her towards the door to this room. She puts one foot in front of the other and she floats forwards on her useless legs, her pilot steering her and supporting the greater part of her insubstantial body weight.
Paris tells her something else. She forces herself to focus this time, asks him to repeat. He says the alien police have already arrested the terrorist assassin and taken him away. She nods. She wants him to leave her alone. She tells him to go help Ayala with Chakotay. He refuses.
"Please, Tom." Then she remembers she is still in command. She should order him to do as she says.
He refuses again. "You have to let me stay with you, Captain, for his sake. He wouldn't have wanted me to leave you on your own."
She relents.
But that's what he has done, isn't it? He's left her on her own. He said he would stay by her side. He's broken his promise.
She realises she is shivering. Paris takes off his jacket and puts it around her shoulders. She closes her eyes and silently crumples into her pilot's embrace.