Author's note: I always liked the idea that Janeway gave up having children, and how tough that must have been. When I first saw the 'Q and the Grey' (and I was very young) I remember feeling really terrible for her when Q homes in on it. And there must have been angst there.
In regards to her age: Memory Beta says she's 35 when she takes control of Voyager (which suits me) and since I'm a huge fan of the books, the non-canon (ha) suits me. Memory Alpha has no date of birth for her, though shares the same date she took control of Voyager. The script for 'Caretaker' says 'woman in early forties'. Mixed to say the least. I'm going to go with Memory Beta, because it is very convenient for the story.
Any reviews and, as equally, constructive critiques are very welcome. If not, I'd just love if you enjoy it.
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me, and nor does any reference or allusion to plots or idea that are recognisably Paramount's or CBS'. I make no gain – monetary or otherwise - from writing these stories. Just for fun.
"Perhaps she would become one of those women, pitied or envied, who chose not to have children."
– Atonement, Ian McKewan
He looks at the chronometer, gliding his fingers across the console to his left as he carries out the daily scans. The bridge is quiet, the gamma shift sliding away one by one as the morning comes around. There is no morning, of course, not in the infinite darkness, split apart only by the pinpricks of stars, which stretches out in front of them. But it is 0600 – the morning, on Earth at least, – and he likes to clear the systems before the next working day, archiving the logs so the computer doesn't run a risk of lagging.
It's something that is so far below his remit, but he does it because he likes to know it's done. And it means she can have the logs instantly, seamlessly, when she rises.
It makes her job easier, and that's his role – above everything he's supposed to do.
He feels something is missing, lacking, in today's routine. Something just at the edges of his consciousness that eludes him. He casts his eyes to the fleeting stars of the views screen, then back to the chronometer.
Then he understands: the twentieth of May.
Stardate 50631.5, the year 2376.
He stops for a moment, quick to do the math, and works it out instantly. He'd been saving replicator rations, of course, but he'd gotten up in a determined rush, and had forgotten. He's always saved his rations for this, but this one is bigger and, even if she won't mark it, he will.
His fingers pause in their fluttering as the memory of a distant conversation comes back to him.
He'd been trying to keep up with her as she strutted, Starfleet to the bone - it had been written in her even then, sewn into her DNA, hardwiring her to her detriment - between the bridge and engineering. Once, billions of stars ago, they'd done that. It had been early on and he was still learning her; her patterns, markers and tells. She was still sizing him up too at that time, this former Maquis captain she'd been ordered to detain, and she had this curiously discomfiting habit of glancing up to her left and to his face when he thought she wasn't looking. He didn't know what she'd hoped to gain from those fleeting, sleek looks. Whatever it was, they'd soon mutated into glances of amusement or indignation or, if it was really called for, fury. On this particular walk, when he'd try to slow the pace to a painful stroll and she'd been striding and stalling and pausing, she'd turned to him.
"Want to know why I'm excited today?"
"Go on," he'd felt his grin curling at the corners of his own mouth, the camaraderie warming him, "Enlighten me."
She had crossed her arms, but not in a way that was uninviting, and leaned towards him. He felt the intimacy of the secret she was about to share as a warm wash of delight, one that was as equally as wondrous every time he felt it, as shattering as the first time it had come at him quite unexpectedly.
"It's my birthday, today, Commander," she'd smiled, cerulean eyes incandescent with the joy of the secret, "And despite being on Voyager, and worlds away from home, I can't help but love it."
He had felt deeply embarrassed for a moment, having not realised: "I am sorry-"
"Why? Because I didn't tell you, or because you didn't know? I can have a look at your records," she twisted her finger lightly, teasingly, into his chest and tapped there, "But you don't get to look at mine. And boy am I glad. If you knew my age, you'd be disappointed."
He'd known Kathryn Janeway's age from the moment he'd stepped onto Voyager, just because the ship had a gossip system that recalled – and shared - these things and, even in her disgruntled fury the first time Kathryn had shown up on the Maquis screen, B'Elanna had commented on how young she looked despite it.
He hadn't thought she was very old at all, she was just slightly younger than him, and he'd loved the grin on her face as she told him.
He couldn't have been less disappointed with Kathryn Janeway if he'd tried. He'd also decided not to tell her he knew, because she valued her privacy as deeply as she valued the concept that she was open and trusting.
She'd been his most favourite contradiction in the whole of the Delta Quadrant. And it was a place which was voluptuous with contradictions.
"I don't think I would be disappointed, ever. Do you love your birthday?"
She'd nodded and leaned against the bulkhead in the quiet corridor, "I do. My mother always made a fuss, and so did daddy. It was a particularly special day in the Janeway household, no matter whose birthday it was."
Her face had grown disconsolate suddenly, just in that split-second where she was transitioning from thought to thought, but she shook it off as if it were a shawl, her shoulders lifting up literally to remove it.
"Nonetheless, I'm sure my mother and sister will stock my birthdays up," she turned and motioned him to follow her.
He watched her go for a second, impressed by her determined resolve, almost equally matched with her naïve excitement, and then followed behind.
That evening, after his shift, he'd gone to Kes' hydroponics bay and chosen the best of Ocampan roses in return for three day's worth of rations. He'd known it meant sure gastro at the hands of Neelix's kitchen, but he'd been willing.
And he'd been willing every birthday since.
He'd gone to her quarters and she'd grinned, widely, uninhibited, when he'd handed them over. His hands had been trembling, fingers clumsily crushing the delicate stems. He'd stiffened them by his sides to ensure she didn't see.
"Happy birthday Captain," he'd murmured, his own embarrassment lessening his confidence.
"You're a charmer," she'd said, voice muffled from within the bunch of bright roses, as she breathed in, "And I like that."
And then he's back in the present, wilting as he remembers it.
Every time he recalls something like this, the intimacy and the closeness, it is an act of self-persecution.
But he's a masochist.
In the now the memory feels brutal, like blunt knife through bone. It grinds, comes to a halt, re-calibrates, and moves again. And the agony is something he can't quite give name to, oblique and suffocating.
He slaps his fingers off his combadge:
"Chakotay to hydroponics."
There is a slight silence, then a voice answers. If he was as good an XO as he used to be, he'd know who the voice belongs to. But he doesn't.
"Are the roses ready?"
He feels the sting that he always does when he tries again. He's never stopped trying, and that in itself is a fool's errand.
"They are Commander. They're in your office."
"Thank you."
He taps the combadge out again and then stalls for a moment.
The roses are mostly thorns, because that's all she sees now. And that is all he's giving. And that's all she's got for him.
But he still gets them, because he feels he can't give it away.
-0-
He pushes the chime button in, hears it echo in her quarters. There are echoes everywhere.
There's barely a pause.
"Come in Chakotay."
She's due on the bridge in thirty minutes, but she's still in her robe. He recognises it: soft cotton, lined in a gentle, dusky pink satin. It may or may not be the one from New Earth – it's been a long time.
It's been a lifetime.
She's standing at the massive viewport, her fingers curled around the edge of the bulkhead, the other holding a coffee cup out to the side as the steam curls, blue-grey, guileless, towards the ceiling.
"Happy birthday Kathryn."
She breathes in, and he watches it ripple through her back as it enters her lungs, and she remains facing out for a moment, staring into the ceaseless expanse of space. He can see the nodules of her spine through the material and it jolts in his conscious, a shot of reality, when he recognises she's naked under it. He feels embarrassed as he realises, and he's seen her in worse states, and he hates that he enjoys seeing her like this.
He still wants to see her like this, even if she doesn't want that.
She's girding herself, against what he does not know, but it's what she's doing nonetheless. He takes it personally – because he always takes it personally – and it pulls at him, wretched and needling.
When she turns though, she's smiling gently and she takes the flowers.
She dips her head, breathes them in. There's something of the routine in it; mundane, for show. There's also something sensational about the innocence of it all, the joy she seems to derive simply from this.
"They get better," she whispers.
"So do lots of things, with age," he says genuinely and whether or not it hits the mark is indecipherable to him.
She doesn't react as she moves to an empty – waiting - vase and puts the flowers in.
"Thank you."
He's not sure if he's being thanked for the flowers, or his dire attempt at a compliment.
He ploughs on, because that's the theme of his life – literally and metaphorically. They are surging through everything, leaving a trail of destruction behind in the Delta Quadrant, and in their lives.
"I have another gift and I wondered if you'd join me for dinner, tonight?"
She turns on her bare heels, so small and quick, that he almost steps back.
"I don't want to celebrate," the words don't have the ire of her actions.
"I do," he says simply.
As if that sort of reasoning ever works with Kathryn. She has never submitted to what he's wanted, so the likelihood of her beginning now is an absurdity in a realm of its own.
"I – " she shrugs, "I…"
"Just me," he sighs, "And we won't mention it."
She stalls again, on the edge of a protest, then she simply nods.
"If you wish, Chakotay."
He wishes for lots of things, he wants to say to her, but none of them ever come true.
-0-
He replicates one of her favourites – a vegetarian alternative for himself – and orders up a vintage bottle of wine for them.
Their conversation is mundane, stilted, such a stark contrast to what it once was. She relaxes though, sliding off her uniform jacket and tossing it over the couch. He pours her wine and she refuses, but she drinks anyway.
"I need to stop…" she waves the glass, "But it's so good."
Kathryn's always had expensive taste. Everything costs something, sometimes a little more, than it should.
He watches as she pivots in her chair, in the sitting area he rarely uses, and slings her legs over the edge. She reclines out, stretching her back in a manner that suggest she's in pain.
Kathryn, he reminds himself, is always in pain these days.
He reaches down to the side of the seat, snug between his thigh and the cushion, pulling the gift free. He's wrapped it in paper he's spent hours illustrating, delicately with ink and stylus; solar systems she loves, supernovas, Federation Crests, the Presidio and the Bay, characters from her beloved novels, Molly, the Indianan flag, the moon over Lake George.
When he can't sleep, he draws. And sleep has left him, adulterous and elusive, and he lies alone in a bed which is too big, facing pain which is too massive.
"Here."
She stretched over to take the gift, and she turns it in her pale hands. Her eyes are large as she takes it in. There is a flash, in that moment, of who she once was. There is wonder on her face and she's pleased, she's overwhelmed, she's moved.
She takes her time still, not quick to unravel the twine. He feels like a boy awaiting appreciation, gratification. He's offering a gift so he can feel that wash of delight that she's so good at sending his way.
She's just not sent it for a long time. Maybe she can't anymore.
"It's just a small…"
She looks up finally and he swears, against all of his knowledge of her, that there are tears in eyes. The blue has taken on a different quality, blurry as it swims in emotion.
They're unshed though and they'll remain that way.
"It's beautiful," she splays her fingers over the illustrations.
"That's just the paper," he shrugs, but he's pleased within himself.
"I love it."
It's the first time, in a long time, that she's said anything she really means, wholeheartedly, to him.
Her nimble fingers begin on the twine and the paper falls into her lap. She sets the paper aside gently, folding it to keep he comes to realise.
She turns the book over, examining it with dawning understanding. It's a replica, of course, of a 17th century edition. She has a penchant for old books; the more tattered and traditional, the better.
A 24th century woman with a penchant for the old…and the damaged.
Voluptuous with contradictions.
She smiles and it actually climbs into her eyes this time, dancing there with naked abandon.
"I left my copy…"
"I know," he grins.
"Paradise Lost?" She shakes her head, "How appropriate…"
He laughs against his better judgement. She laughs too and it's a moment to get lost in, he thinks, the here and the now. Throaty, dark. It buries itself in a memory, adding itself to the multitude he's maintaining as if he's a curator of a lost world.
He's always had a proclivity for archaeology.
"You always remember," she holds the book in her lap, her fingers smoothing over the leather cover, gentle and tremulous.
"I do."
"Thank you for making me celebrate it, despite myself," she says, a sigh covering her words.
It occurs to him, now, that she never gives herself anything of joy.
"It's a Janeway tradition, you told me once," he smiles softly.
"I'd almost forgotten," she shakes her head, "I…"
She rolls her neck, closes her eyes for just a second. She's regrouping, trying to stave off the emotions that must be rearing in her breastbone. It's agonising to watch.
"Forty, Chakotay, my fortieth birthday…and I'm here," she shakes her head, "I didn't expect to be here."
He feels the question on his tongue before he can stop it. He wants to swallow it, but it forces it way out anyway, bypassing his sensibilities as it's propelled by his desperate quest for the emotions he needs to see.
He needs to prove to himself that they still exist.
"What did you expect?"
He knows this is dangerous territory with Kathryn. She doesn't like venturing into the realms of distant possibility, or casting her mind back into what may have been. She surges forward, and that's the way she's been since the moment she stepped in front of him on the bridge some five years ago.
And, along the way, that's all she's become.
She looks so far away as she answers, "I'd be Mark's wife and…I'd be someone's mother."
This answer takes him by surprise though, on reflection, he realises it shouldn't. He expected Captain Janeway to answer, her ambitions to be Admiral or her passionate desire to be the most lauded explorer of the century voicing itself. Instead Kathryn answers and the answer is as simple as it is excruciating.
And the vagueness of it. She can't bring herself to say 'I'd have a child', so she cushions it in a detachment that is cumbersome and bizarre.
She sinks the contents of her wine glass, "Instead I'm here. Very much single and very much childless."
The words are blunt and sharp all at once, cutting through her exterior to reveal a person in incredible pain, and cutting through his to reach that part of him that switched off to her, just for his own self-preservation.
He can't lie to her and he won't pretend. So he simply says:
"I am sorry, Kathryn, that you've had to give that up."
She smirks cruelly, "My choice."
He shakes his head.
"You didn't have a choice," he contradicts softly because he knows it's what she'll want to hear, rather than what he wants to say.
She cocks her head to look at him and he knows his lie has missed its target, "I did, once. I chose wrong. Now it's gone."
He knows what she means – a Paradise Lost in its most literal sense – and he agrees. She chose wrong, and he chose not to make her see that. And then Voyager came back, as if they wanted it to.
He wonders if they wanted it to.
He used to be sure, but now he's doubting as thoroughly as one can doubt.
"What if it's not gone," he asks, "What if it's just on hold?"
"It'll be on hold for lightyears," she doesn't look at him, keeping her eyes on the bound leather of the book, "Do you know, once, it was considered tasteless for a woman to choose to remain childless? And here I am, free to the choice, and I have to battle every day over whether or not it's what I want. It isn't what I would have wanted – I wanted a family - and now…I don't know..."
"It's been on hold for long enough," he feels his voice trembling, "And what's another sixty years?"
She laughs gently then, but under it he hears the tremor of sadness.
"Do you want children?"
He looks at her.
"I did," he nods, "I do. I don't want to let go of it quite yet…and nor should you."
There remains so much unsaid, in the pauses and fragments which make up his words, in each syllable which is laced with subtext and inference and hope. She turns her face away.
"You're in the position, Chakotay, where you can choose to be with someone – "
"I'm not," he says, far blunter than he intends, "I'm not. I don't want just anyone."
She nods because she knows, but just because she hears it doesn't mean she's listening.
"That's not your only choice."
"It is," he affirms, then takes a fortifying drink, and neatly summarises: "It seems we're bound by the impossible."
She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes, "I didn't think I wanted it so much, until I couldn't have it."
He knows that sensation with an intimacy that would amaze even her, so he understands precisely what she means.
"I understand, but – "
"Don't try to convince me otherwise," she holds up a gentle hand, and takes another sip before she continues, "I have made the decision and now I have to live with it."
"We're probably going to disagree on that," he shrugs, "You see it as a choice you've had to make, and it has been made and is now unalterable. But it's one which could be rectified, I believe."
He doesn't really know to which choice they're referring anymore. In truth, it doesn't matter. It just matters that she's talking. That he's getting something in return for the misery he lives with, has become bedfellows with.
He allows himself, for a second which is criminal and will rend a part of him to pieces, to imagine children with her. A ripeness of life which is not theirs to have. To imagine a life. Then he shuts it down instantly because dwelling on it is a murderous, ripping sensation.
She shakes her head, and there are tears lingering in her eyes. He hates seeing her cry – though it is a rarity as miraculous as a supernova – and he doesn't want to be the one to make her weep on her birthday.
"Only at the cost of Voyager, and only at the cost of getting us home."
Her voice makes it sound like a question, the little inflection which climbs up at the end – as Kathryn, the woman who wants this as badly as he does, emerges from within - but he knows it is not. It's a statement, not quite a command, but a clarification of why she cannot venture into the opaque life beyond the boundaries they've established in their relationship.
Voyager.
Home.
It's a conquest which is venturing, now, into the realm of the pyrrhic. He can't possibly begin to imagine the casualties of self they can stand to give, when this is all that's left of them.
He nods, "I know, and that is what you believe," he leans forward, "God forbid, Kathryn, I try to convince you of anything else."
"I'm stubborn. Isn't that what you love about me?"
The question is half-playful, half-searching.
Sometimes she delivers real, heaving punches without even looking at where her fists are flying. He swallows and tries to pull together an answer that won't be self-pitying or gratifying.
"Amongst a multitude of reasons."
She sees then what she's done, and her face falters. He wonders if he looks as stricken as he feels.
"If we-"
"When we get home," he corrects, regrouping from her blow, using her own words to battle the urge to despise what they've grown into.
"I'll be too old to have children," she finally lifts her eyes, telling him her fear.
A theoretical, totally hypothetical fear, of course. There can only be fear in an obtuse sense because it won't ever happen.
He nods, "That won't matter."
What will matter?"
It's a challenge he's not fit for, he doesn't have a limit, and she knows it. Nothing will ever dissuade him from her – not a more beautiful woman, not a more selfless one, not a less demanding one.
Not even a woman who can give him the children he's been denied.
"Nothing. Nothing could matter, nothing could matter enough."
She lets the silence fall on them then, propping up the reveal of his devotion. It's not like she didn't know, but it's something she finds difficult to stomach when it's out in the open…again.
"Is that something you're really willing to give up?"
Her fingers skate over the cover of the book as she asks and looks him in the eye. She's almost defeated, as if his passionate, dogged, obsessive determination to remain steadfast in this storm she stirs is exhausting her.
Maybe it is.
"One day, we'll look, and we'll have missed all the chances we had to make the right choices."
He says it and shrugs, settles back, as the intensity suddenly snaps. The moment's gone. And he's as aware of the futility of it all as he's always been. But then again so is she. It's easy to negotiate the terms of a return to Earth, to the life they could have, when both of them know they'll be dead before it happens.
Pyrrhic.
And all they will leave behind are other people's children, and so much unfinished business, and some many declarations left unmade, that it'll seem absurd.
She laughs despite herself and asks:
"And what will be left?"
"A command team who can't seem to sever their last ties with each other…and no children, well none of their own anyway," he answers.
She laughs again and holds her glass up to him in a toast.
What a birthday gift.
"To terrible choices we'll have to live with."
He salutes her toast, and laughs a black laugh. Masochism isn't close enough a word for what they're doing. There are no words.
Then he leans forwards, closes the space between them, and touches her cheek.
It's her birthday, and she gives herself a gift after all – she doesn't shudder away. She kisses his palm instead.
"Happy birthday Kathryn."
"Was she thy God,
lovely to attract
Thy love, not thy subjection…"
– Paradise Lost, John Milton