The Very Last Day
Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. are owned by Paramount.
Author's Note: This ficlet is written for the VAMB Drabble Exchange 2010 for CaptKJaneway. Thank you for a great first line! And to Marauder and mab13j for their terrific beta-ing!
Starfleet is never going to believe this.
Captain Janeway, Lieutenant Torres, and Commander Tuvok just beamed off Voyager and onto a Borg cube to be assimilated. On purpose. And I let them go.
I let her go.
I should be taking action, scanning something, giving an order, moving, but all I can do is watch, straining to remember the last desperate imprints of her smile. Her leaving.
A few moments elapse or perhaps it's an eternity, and then Harry is reporting that the Away Team is gone. There's a hand on my shoulder. Tom. I try to meet his eyes, but my own pain is mirrored so sharply in their depths that I can only drop my gaze. He offers me a PADD, a routine conn report that he usually turns in only after considerable harassing on my part. It's nothing urgent, nothing that can't wait until tomorrow or maybe even next year. But it's a distraction, for both of us, and I am grateful for his efforts. I nod at him, my lips flattening into what will never pass for a smile, but he knows why I'm rock-hard and merely squeezes my shoulder for an instant. I return to my seat to begin the waiting.
I have no idea how we're going to make it through the next few days, but somehow they pass. There's not much time to think, only seconds to decide, to act, and then to evaluate the inevitable damage. The Borg Queen understands far more about the situation than we suspected, and when she projects Kathryn's image to us, I'm not sure how I remain standing in Sickbay when everything inside me has buckled. She's there, and somehow it's the real-Kathryn, not the Borg-Kathryn, and I'm moving towards her, my hand outstretched until I see her face and remember this is no time to let my emotions have sway. Seven's presence somehow steadies me, her eerie clarity a buffer to my runaway heart. Seven is incensed when she hears Kathryn's orders, but I understand, and I can only hope that my eyes give her comfort, justification, in those last seconds before she fades away.
There are hours of planning and executing the plans—and more hours of waiting. And then, almost too soon and far too late, it's over. They're back, and Tom and I are running, running from the bridge without stopping until we reach Sickbay.
The three of them are sprawled on biobeds, their bodies taken over by the insidious Borg machinery, their minds hopefully safe. They're far too different be human, yet far too human to be anything else. I watch them, the Doctor quickly moving between patients with Tom trailing behind him, his troubled gaze never leaving B'Elanna's face. I could offer to help, but I don't think I could even hold a tricorder at this moment. All I can do is walk slowly towards her silver-and-black form, stand above her and stare helplessly at this woman that I have loved for so long. I think I might be crying, and the Doctor is suddenly talking to me, his face close to mine, his eyes flashing.
But I can't think, I can't move, I can't breathe. And I can't leave until I know she's okay.
When I ring her door chime, she answers right away. Perhaps she was expecting me. I know I'm pretty predictable when it comes to looking after her. She's stretched out on the couch, her head cradled in a stack of pillows. I recognize the blanket tucked around her shoulders as the one I made for her on New Earth. She holds a PADD in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The classic Kathryn Janeway pose. Perhaps we're both a bit predictable when it comes right down to it.
Somehow, after her body had been fully ravaged by Borg implants, after she risked everything for a people that had nothing, after nearly sacrificing her humanity to that race of terrorists— after all that, I expect something to be different about her. I expect her to be somehow…less. As if the Borg drained some of her Kathryn-ness. But she's not. If anything, she's more, and I don't know how that's possible. Her life force is almost palpable, even from across the room, and I don't know how she manages to be even more beautiful, but she is.
Yet I know one thing. Today is the very last day I am swallowing my feelings, my words, my love. My stride is purposeful as I move towards the couch and sit down next to her. She smiles at me, her face tired, but her eyes bright.
"I heard the Doctor had some trouble getting you out of Sickbay," she says, her lips twisting as she struggles to contain her amusement.
"I was a little…upset," I admit, shrugging. Her eyebrows shoot up.
"You were nearly escorted out by Security." Her eyes beam twin phasers at my face until we both give in and laugh. Then her expression becomes serious.
"I know all of this was hard for you, Chakotay," she says softly. "I'm sorry." I reach out and take her hand softly in mine, hearing her sharp intake of breath as my thumb caresses her skin.
"I can't do this again, Kathryn." The words slip from my throat with no compunctions about being heard. Her eyes meet mine strangely.
"Chakotay." Her voice is hesitant.
"I mean it, Kathryn. This is the last time you get hurt, the last time you're in danger, the last time you walk away without knowing. Because next time could be the end, and I wouldn't be able to live with that. I won't make the same mistake twice."
"Twice?" she repeats hoarsely.
"Yes," I answer. "My father died before I could tell him how much I loved him. How much he meant to me."
She struggles to sit up straight, pain flickering across her face, but she ignores the support from my outstretched arm. She looks down at her lap for a minute, to our hands entwined there, and then back up to meet my eyes.
"Chakotay, we-" The firmness is back, the captain's mask re-engaged, but I don't care.
"I love you, Kathryn." My words wash over hers, drowning them. "And I'm pretty sure you feel the same way about me." She draws a deep breath.
"That not the point," she says, but her eyes have gone a muted gray.
"Why not?" I demand. "Don't we deserve to be happy?"
"Of course, but…"
"Are you happy, Kathryn? Look me in the eye and tell me you're happy."
"Chakotay…"
"Tell me, Kathryn."
"I'm…happy."
"When?"
"What?" Now there's outrage in her tone.
"When are you happy? When we're under attack? When you're working 20 hour days holed up in your Ready Room reading reports? When you sleep alone every night? When, Kathryn?" I don't mean to raise my voice, but the desperation surging through me is almost too much.
There is silence in the room, so cold and clear and prolonged that it almost takes my breath away. I am waiting for her to get angry, waiting for her to yell, to throw me out or call Security. But then something indefinable fills her eyes.
"When…when I'm with you."
Her words are far from what I expected, and I half-gasp. The anger, the sheer frustration, drains out of me, and I feel limp in the sudden absence of emotion.
"But that doesn't mean-" she begins, but I reach out and cup her chin.
"You're still holding my hand," I point out. She looks confused.
"Excuse me?"
"You're still holding my hand," I repeat. "You've been trying to tell me that we can't be together on Voyager, that we can't be together while we're in the Delta Quadrant. You have every protocol and every reason planned out in your head like a defense lawyer. But you're still holding my hand." Our eyes meet, a cataclysm of emotions that seem like they should be audible in the sudden stillness of the room. And then she slumps, the tension, the defiance, the walls draining away like so much sand in a tidal wave. Her eyes are suddenly teary, her lips trembling in what must be a reflection of my own.
"I don't want to let go." It's a whisper, so soft, so tentative, that I can barely make out the words. And then she repeats it, her voice suddenly strong, decisive, familiar. "I don't want to let go."
With that, her arms are around me, her lips crushed against mine, and I can feel the tandem beating of our hearts. We make our way to the bedroom still wrapped around each other because now neither of us is willing to let go. And as we move I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror above the sink, and it reflects the irony of this situation in its truest form.
It also reflects the miracles.
One raced that was saved by the actions of one amazing woman.
One quadrant that had flung at us everything in its power, and yet still we stood.
Two separate crews that had become more than family.
Two people who were about to become one.
A Starfleet captain and a Maquis turned loyal First Officer.
Starfleet is never going to believe this.
The End