Onwards
A/N: This is the conclusion to my series of 'Ayala' stories that began with 'Down Time' and continued in 'Observations', 'Last Words' and 'Things Fall Apart'. I had been thinking that I might write one last short on-Voyager fic with Ayala's take on C/7, but I've already been sucked back into J/C too much when I really, really should be concentrating on other things. So here I am re-posting this. Thank you to MissyHissy3 for her original beta.
Summary: Post Endgame, Chakotay is surprised by a chance encounter. (This ignores the events of the books.)
Chapter One
The sky over San Francisco was as blue as Chakotay had ever seen it, an unclouded sun beating down out of the hot July day. It was Sunday, which meant there were no classes to teach. The preparation for the following week he had completed on Saturday, which meant today was truly his and his alone. That was a habit he'd developed on Voyager – carving out a piece of the week, however small, in which he had nothing to do but what he himself chose. It was a survival tactic, one that he had attempted to encourage the rest of the crew to adopt. In a life as singularly dedicated as theirs had been forced to become, respite was as necessary a part of morale as any party thrown by Neelix or any holodeck distraction developed by Tom Paris. By the end of their journey, there was only one crewmember that had failed to take his advice. But then, she had never been obligated to take anything from him at all.
For all his efforts to keep this day free, today Chakotay had obligations of his own. Pleasant ones, but obligations nonetheless, which meant there were certain things he had to make sure he did. He rose early, as usual, and enjoyed a run along the beach that was a mere two blocks from the achingly modern apartment complex he had made his home. When he'd finally decided what to do following their return, the choices he had made had raised a few eyebrows. To be honest, Chakotay still wasn't sure this was where he would stay. But the opportunity offered him at Starfleet Academy was too good to pass up just because right now he wasn't quite sure that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. All Chakotay really knew at this point was that he wanted to stand still for a while. He wanted a chance for life to pass by him as he watched, rather than the other way around. Besides that, he wanted to breathe: to really breathe, to inhale air that hadn't been through a thousand cycles of mechanical cleansing before he took it back into his lungs.
So this apartment, this teaching position at Starfleet Academy – it was fine. Not perfect, perhaps, but then what was?
His former crewmates had chosen various different paths. Some had left Starfleet altogether. Others, like him, had taken a less demanding role that meant they could spend more time with the families they had been without for seven years. Still others had thrown themselves back into the saddle immediately, as if they were afraid to stand still. As if doing so, in fact, might force them to confront aspects of their lives that they were not yet ready to deal with.
And others? One other, in particular, of course. Chakotay had not seen or spoken to Kathryn Janeway in months. He'd heard through the grapevine that she was heading up an expedition of scientific ships that were due to take a long sojourn into deep space. He hoped that she would find whatever it was she was still searching for, but he doubted it. Chakotay had become aware, years ago, that whatever it was that Janeway was looking for was as unreachable as smoke and just as intangible. In truth, he had come to suspect that for Kathryn Janeway, fulfilment was necessarily unattainable. What she had achieved, what she had seen, where she had been – none of this seemed to be enough to quench her need to keep moving. Perhaps it was atonement, he mused. Perhaps there was something for which she simply could not forgive herself, and all her searching, all her restless self-sacrifice even in the wake of Voyager's successful and safe return, was simply the long shadow of an unhealed, self-inflicted wound.
These thoughts rattled around Chakotay's head as he showered and changed after his run, as circular as they had ever been. He locked them in the stillness of the apartment behind him as he left it again, unwilling to let them take up more of this precious free day than they already had. He'd let that happen before, too many times to count, and it did him no good.
Her face faded from his mind as he stepped out onto the Sunday quiet of the street. He checked his watch – plenty of time to do all he needed to. Enough time, in fact, to walk to the supermarket, rather than taking the hovercar. Paris would laugh at him – did laugh at him frequently, in fact – for owning a vehicle he so rarely saw fit to use. But even a year on, being able to walk somewhere that didn't lead directly to a turbolift was still enough of a novelty that Chakotay chose it time and again.
His communicator chirruped in his pocket as he walked.
"Chakotay?"
He smiled. "Maria. Morning."
"And good morning to you. Just checking that you haven't forgotten…"
"Of course not."
"… and that you're not going to be late."
"I won't be late. When am I ever late?"
"Well, just make sure that today isn't the day you break the habit of a lifetime. All right?"
A small niggle of suspicion began to form in the back of Chakotay's mind. "Why?" he asked. "What's so special about today?"
"What – making my boys happy isn't enough for you after their father abandoned them for seven years to follow you half way across the universe?"
Chakotay shook his head with a smile. "You're never not going to use that to get what you want out of me, are you?"
He could hear the answering smile in her voice as she laughed, "What do you think? But you owe me for something else this time."
"Oh? What?"
"You'll see. Just don't be late."
"I won't be."
"Good. Oh, and Chakotay?"
"Yes."
"Make an effort today, OK? Wear those pants. You know, the dark ones. You look good in those."
He groaned. "Maria…"
"Don't 'Maria' me," she scolded gently. "There will just be a few extra people coming today, that's all. Nothing to worry about."
He sighed. "Who-"
"Later, Chakotay. Later!" And with that, she was gone.
He put the communicator back in his pocket with a frown. Suddenly, a lazy afternoon barbecue at the Ayalas' place seemed significantly less inviting. At some point in the past year, Maria Ayala seemed to have decided that Chakotay's single state was a problem, and moreover, it was a problem that had fallen to her to solve. She'd push women in front of him at every opportunity, despite the fact that he'd told her he was perfectly capable of finding companionship himself should he need it.
"Then why don't we ever see you with these fabled women?" was her reply. "I tell you, Chakotay, there are two answers to that question: Either there aren't any and you are lying to me, or they're not the sort you keep around long enough to introduce to your family. And whichever one of those is the answer, it's not right. Look at you. You're almost 50. You can't play around forever. You always wanted a family, you always wanted children. So get to it, before you're too old to play with your own kids the way you played with ours when they were little."
Maria Ayala was not one to sugar-coat her pronouncements. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he'd long ago given up on the idea of a family of his own. His relationship with Seven had been the final nail in that coffin – he'd known very early on that the Borg interference with her systems made it likely she'd never be able to conceive. It was a consideration, of course it was – he hadn't begun to date her lightly - and given his age, those kinds of big questions had to be asked and answered early. But he'd wanted to make it work, he really had, and in the end it hadn't been overly hard to let go of that particular dream. Despite the joy that Naomi brought to the crew's lives, Chakotay wasn't at all sure that he'd want to raise a child aboard Voyager himself, however much he admired and supported B'Elanna and Tom's decision to have Miral.
It hadn't worked out with Seven. That hadn't been a huge surprise, certainly not once they'd made it home, but the idea of then starting a serious relationship with someone new – someone who could never really understand what it had been like to spend seven years in a bubble so far from anything known – was frankly just too difficult to contemplate. So he'd resigned himself, really, to remaining single. Not that he actively pushed women away – he just didn't seek them out, or encourage them to stay. He couldn't see himself with another person, not permanently, not anymore. It was as simple as that. And he was fine on his own. He was fine.
He reached the supermarket doors and passed from the raw heat of the morning into the air-conditioned cool inside, snagging a basket as he mentally listed the produce he needed. If there were more people coming, he should take more with him. The three-tomato salad he always prepared, of course, but what else? Chargrilled zucchini, sliced as thin as paper and salted to draw out the water… Fresh green beans, blanched and tossed with parmesan, perhaps…
Chakotay's attention was briefly caught by a figure ahead of him. He glanced up and saw it disappearing between two aisles, out of sight before he'd even properly seen her. He frowned, momentarily distracted, though there was no reason to be. For a fraction of a second, he'd thought it was Janeway, though if he'd been asked to explain why, he'd have struggled to pinpoint a reason. Something about the way the woman moved, perhaps. A similar roll of the hip, maybe, or something reminiscent about her hair. Or, more likely, the fact that he'd been thinking of her earlier.
It wasn't her, of course. Even if he hadn't known she was currently at the outer reaches of the galaxy, this was a long way from her home turf.
Chips and dips to fill out the table, he thought, washing the returned image of her face from his mind. Though the table would likely be laden as it was. Maria Ayala never skimped on hospitality, no matter how many extra mouths she'd invited this afternoon.
His basket full of empty calories, Chakotay made for the fresh produce. He'd revelled in this since their return – the simple joy of unrestricted and recognisable fresh food. As he reached for some tomatoes, he saw the woman again. She was standing on the other side of the triangular display. She wasn't moving. She was just standing, apparently contemplating an array of oranges with rapt attention.
Kathryn Janeway.
Chakotay froze for a moment, his arm still outstretched as he tried to work it out. What on earth was she doing here? What was she doing on Earth at all? He watched her, but she didn't move, and she hadn't seen him. She seemed lost in thought, and he had a sudden image of her in uniform, seated behind the desk in her ready room, the same contemplative look on her face as they sat opposite each other doing their weekly reports. She'd have coffee, he'd have tea, and there they would sit for hours in companionable silence, working through PADD after PADD, finishing one and handing it to the other for review. It was a habit they'd fallen into after New Earth, when they had both discovered that they worked best in each other's quiet company. It had lasted up until the events surrounding their discovery of the Equinox, and he wondered whether she had missed it as much as he had in those last two years of their exile.
Another shopper appeared at his side, shaking Chakotay from his brief reverie. He moved aside and put down his basket. Kathryn was still standing in the same place, a strange look on her face, though her gaze roved along the display of fruit. He began to move closer and felt something turn over in his gut. What was that? Some emotion brought out by the surprise of seeing her, here, in this supermarket, of all places. There was something deeply incongruous about it. He'd seen her command the bridge of a starship with absolute skill. He'd seen her with her boots off and her feet up on the table in her ready room. He'd seen her in battle. He'd seen her in pain. He'd seen her laughing and he'd seen her in tears. He'd even seen her wrapped in nothing but a towel, and yet to him she'd always worn that uniform, as if it were impossible for her to escape the shadow of it, whether or not it was physically present.
Here she was, though, out of uniform in flat pumps, pale blue jeans and a white shirt, and although something in his deeper self had recognised her without even seeing her face, his brain had dismissed her as a stranger.
Chakotay stopped when there was no more than a foot between them, but she still hadn't registered his presence. He was concerned by her stillness. Her arms hung at her sides, hands curled into fists. Her weight was on one foot, leaning towards the produce, though the tension in her shoulders was holding her back.
"Kathryn?"
She spun to face him, wide eyed, taking one shocked breath and then another before that had even reached her lungs – a double inhalation that somehow made the thing that had been rolling in his gut since he saw her knot itself a little tighter.
"Chakotay."
She said it in the tone of a deeply shocked whisper, yet also as if she'd somehow expected him. Janeway blinked, her gaze roving over his face.
"Captain – what are you doing here?"
He regretted using her rank the moment it was out of his mouth. It had even less place here than she did. Janeway turned away, looking again at the piles of fruit before them.
"I… I was passing. I suddenly had the greatest craving for an orange. But then I got here and… and there's so much variety, Chakotay. I just…"
She trailed off. Her hands were at her sides again, clenched.
Despite the peculiarity of the situation, Chakotay smiled slightly. "Too much choice?"
"Yes! But not only that, I keep rediscovering things I had forgotten." She gestured. "Lychees, for example. I never, not in the seven years that we were out there, thought once about a lychee. So I never replicated one. And then I walked in here and there they are, and… And I love them. I love how sweet they are, how sticky. I love how ridiculous they are to eat because it takes forever to peel them and then the stone is so big it's hardly worth it. How did I forget that? How did I just… forget them so completely for seven years?" She was still turned away from him, but he could see open distress on her face.
It's just a fruit, he wanted to say, it's nothing to worry about. But he understood. He really did, enough to know that this – whatever it was - wasn't about a fruit. At least, it wasn't only about a fruit. He'd been there himself, in the first months following their return. An intense sense of dislocation – of culture shock, almost. The crew of Voyager had returned to a place they should know well and yet everything was just slightly different, both because the memory cheats and also because the world they thought would be waiting for them had subtly moved on. Most of them had dealt with it slowly. It occurred to him that perhaps some of them hadn't dealt with it at all.
"Neelix would love this, wouldn't he?" she said, with a shrug that encompassed everything before them.
Chakotay laughed. "Yes, he would."
Janeway smiled. "I miss him. Sometimes - say it quietly - I even miss his cooking. Now that we're home I can have anything I want, any time I want it – no rationing, no replicators-"
"No leola root," he reminded her.
She looked up at him again, a playful spark in her eyes that he hadn't seen for years. "True. But sometimes," she whispered conspiratorially, "I even miss the leola root."
"On the other hand," he said, matching her tone, "real coffee."
She smiled at that, really smiled, and the gesture wiped away so many years that just for a second, it was as if he was seeing it for the first time.
"Kathryn, what are you doing here? I thought you were heading up the Riker Initiative out of Deep Space Five. Didn't that leave a month ago?"
Janeway looked away and twined her fingers together. "My mother died three months ago."
He reached out reflexively, grasping her arm gently. "I'm so sorry to hear that."
She nodded, and tried for a weak smile as she sighed. "I wasn't even here. Can you believe that? I was on Deep Space Five, preparing for my next assignment. We were stuck out there in the Delta Quadrant for seven years, and yet when we finally make it back I still don't put my family first."
"I'm sure she understood," Chakotay said, though the words sounded like a platitude, even to his ears.
"Yes, she always understood," was Kathryn's strained response. "She understood when my father was away for such long periods. She understood when he died, she understood when I stranded a ship full of people in a distant galaxy, she understood when I thought it more important to go out again instead of having a different life closer to home, closer to her. She always understood, but it doesn't make it-" Janeway broke off, and shook her head. "Anyway. In the light of my bereavement – or rather, in the light of this bereavement on top of everything else that's happened in the past eight years, the Starfleet doctors decided that I needed to take an enforced break, and rescinded my medical clearance. So here I am… taking a break. I just drove up the coast to Seattle and back."
"On your own?"
She shrugged.
"That's a long way to go alone."
She gave him a look. "I've been further."
He frowned. "I wish you'd called me."
"Why?"
"We were friends once, weren't we? Do you think I don't care? Do you think I wouldn't have been there for you?"
Kathryn looked away. "You have your own life, Chakotay. Finally, you have your own life, and from what I hear it's a good one. Do you think I would drag you away from that – again?"
"What makes you think you'd have had to drag me?"
"We haven't spoken in months. You haven't called me in months."
"You haven't called me, either. I didn't think you wanted to talk to me. You haven't called anyone – I know you haven't, or someone would have known about your mother, and Tom Paris would have been on comms immediately, demanding that I get in touch with you."
She glanced up at him, surprised and amused. "Would he?"
"Oh, yes."
She shook her head. "I didn't… I couldn't call you - any of you."
"Why not?"
"Because I took seven years of your life! I took seven years of all your lives. And now you all have them back, and I couldn't just…"
"You could have, and you should have. They all love you. We all love you. Sooner or later, you're going to have to replace your guilt about what happened to Voyager with something else. Replace it with that."
She looked up at him silently for a moment, eyes sheened with tears that he knew she wouldn't let fall. "Why didn't you think I wanted to talk to you?"
"What?"
"You said, 'I didn't think you wanted to talk to me'. Why would you think that?"
He shrugged. "It was a strange seven years, and they didn't end easily between us."
Janeway nodded. "It was probably better to move on, leave it all behind."
"Yes." He'd thought the same. Or at least, Chakotay thought he had. Now he wondered whether it was just that he knew that's exactly what she'd be thinking.
"Did you?" she asked, quietly. "Did you leave me behind?"
He almost laughed as he realised a truth he'd never before acknowledged. "No. I tried, but no. Did you leave me behind?"
Kathryn did laugh. "Of course I didn't. Why else would I take a detour just to drive through a neighbourhood I'd heard you lived in?"
There was a brief silence. The knot spinning in Chakotay's gut had begun to make it difficult to breathe.
"Sorry," she said, looking down at her hands. "Look – I need to get on. I really only stopped for-"
"An orange," he finished for her.
Janeway smiled, though it was a poor shadow of her best. "Yes. And maybe some lychees…"
"Does that mean you're busy for the rest of the day?"
She grew very still. "No. Not really. Why?"
"I'm going to see some friends this afternoon. The Ayalas, in fact. They're having a barbecue."
A strange look crossed her face. "Mike… his wife is Maria?"
"That's right. Why don't you come with me? I know Mike would love to see you, and Maria has always wanted to meet you. She used to ask me about you all the time."
Janeway was shaking her head before he'd even finished speaking. "Oh, I don't think so, Chakotay. I don't want to intrude."
"You wouldn't be. Maria called me a while ago and told me that she'd already invited a few other people."
"No, I really don't think…"
"Kathryn," he said, softly, simply to stop her.
They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Chakotay had realised that something had changed. Nothing he could pinpoint. Nothing she could either, he surmised. But today had become something other than it had been when each of them got up that morning.
"If you like," he said, "I can check that it's OK. But I can tell you now that it will be."
"Please," she said. "I just don't want to turn up unannounced."
"But you'll come?"
She smiled. "If it's not an imposition. Yes, I'll come."
Chakotay pulled the communicator from his pocket and thumbed in a contact. It beeped quietly as it waited for an answer.
"I still sometimes reach for my Starfleet one," Janeway said, nodding to the device in his hand. "Takes some getting used to, being a civilian."
"Hello?"
"Mike? It's Chakotay."
"Hey, Cap. What's up? Oh, wait a minute – no, no, no. You're not going to cancel, are you? You can't. You just can't. Maria will kill me."
"Relax, I'm still coming. I just wanted to check it's OK to bring someone."
There was a pause. "Ah – sure. Of course it is. Anyone I know?"
Chakotay glanced at Janeway, wondering how to answer. Before he could, she stepped forward, placing her hand over his to speak into the communicator.
"Mike? It's Kathryn Janeway here."
There was a slight choking sound on the other end of the line."C-captain?"
"Not Captain," she corrected quietly. "Just Kathryn. Are you sure it's no trouble, me gatecrashing your afternoon?"
Chakotay could hear the grin in Mike's voice. "No. No, not at all, Kathryn. It'll be wonderful to see you."
"Thank you, that's very kind. What can I bring?"
There was another pause, and then Mike said, "You know what? I haven't made the potato salad yet."
Janeway looked away, smiling and shaking her head. "Potato salad?"
"Yes, C… Kathryn. Think you could manage that?"
"I can give it a try. Potato salad it is."
"Great. I'll let Maria know. See you two later."
Chakotay watched Kathryn's face as he pocketed the communicator. She was still laughing about something, and shrugged when he caught her eye.
"Private joke," she explained.
"Is that right?" They were still standing very close. Chakotay reached out, smoothing a strand of hair behind her ear. "You'll have to tell me about it one day."
"Maybe I will."
"Potato salad?"
"Yes."
He thought for a second. "Turbolift malfunction? You two were-"
She put her hand on his chest, right over his heart. "Don't," she said. "Let's not go back there. Not today."
"All right."
"Onwards," she said.
Chakotay nodded. "Onwards."
[TBC]
Original A/N: Missy has reminded me that we once had a conversation in which she said something about me writing a story wherein our star-crossed lovers go shopping at Tesco... So I clearly have her to blame/thank for planting the seed for this story!