By Delta Story
September 2015
~ Written for Cheshire for VAMB's Secret Summer story exchange ~
"Mom. I told you that Eliot and I wanted to keep this wedding within the families!" The ferocity in Phoebe's eyes practically burned a hole in the communication monitor.
"I know, I know. But now that you and Eliot have made names for yourselves in spatial design, there are more people to consider who might feel slighted if we left them off the list. Then there are all our Starfleet connections who are practically family. Don't you agree?" Gretchen Janeway responded in her usual logical manner.
Phoebe shook her head and sighed in defeat. "All right, but let's not invite all of Starfleet. As it is, Kathryn's schedule was crucial to setting a date, just so we could be certain she'll be here. Maybe I can arrange to have a baby due when and if and when she and Mark ever decide to get married. I'm getting tired of being the one to arrange my life events around her!"
Gretchen's voice remained calm and collected. "As I recall, you and Eliot decided on a date a couple of months before Kathryn found out about her new round of assignments. It just so happens that this most recent one popped up at the last minute, so I don't want to hear any more of 'It's Kathryn's fault' from you. Besides, you won't have to worry about the details; Eliot's parents and Julia Paris have volunteered to help us."
"Fine, fine," Phoebe threw up her hands in exasperation. "At this point, I just want to get the thing over with. Maybe Eliot and I should just hop aboard the next shuttle and elope."
For the first time in the long conversation, Gretchen's face lit up with emotion. "Phoebe Elsa Janeway – you wouldn't dare!"
"By the time this fiasco takes place, I'd consider it a serious option. Look, Mom – do what you want. Just keep me informed of your plans so that we don't duplicate any efforts. Is it a deal?"
"It's a deal," Gretchen acknowledged with a relieved sigh. "And I do promise that it won't become a three-ring circus. You know me well enough to know that."
"Yes, Mom, I do," Phoebe answered with a relieved but sincere smile. "And I really do thank you for everything you are doing; it takes a lot off my shoulders with the deadline for the Deep Space Nine project due in three weeks. Speaking of which, I have a meeting with their logistics team in an hour – better pull my things together."
"I'm only too happy to be able to help; that's what a mother does, my dear. Now you go do your thing. Love you!"
"And I love you, Mom." Phoebe's image faded along with the echo of her words.
Gretchen Janeway didn't really want to become a Godzilla mother-of-the-bride but she knew her younger daughter's tendency of procrastination. Also Elise Pfeffer, Eliot's mother, had practically pleaded to help with the wedding, as Eliot was hers and Willam's only offspring. Besides, with the ongoing conflicts of the Cardassian conflicts, just about everyone they knew could use a bit of forget-about-your-problems frivolity. It would definitely provide some R & R time for Kathryn, and who knows? It might even prompt her and Mark to finally make some plans.
The view from her kitchen window further buoyed her spirits. Winter's grayness was finally lifting and the trees outside radiated with the bright shade of green that is seen only in April. And that wonderful spring air, she thought as she took several quick steps to the kitchen door leading out to the porch that ran the length of the house. Opening the door, the sun's warmth mellowed the briskness the outdoor temperature. She closed her eyes as a peaceful contentment enveloped her.
Gretchen's serene reverie suddenly vaporized, as several piercing squawks and a flurry of wings whizzed by her. Startled back to attention, her eyes widened with horror: a blue jay had flown into the house, raising a raucous as it careened around the room.
The startled woman grabbed a nearby broom and an erratic chase proceeded to zip through several rooms. "Shoo, shoo!" she yelled while trying to urge the frenzied bird outside. After what felt like fifteen minutes, a streak of blue and gray made a fast and furious exit through the still open door. As soon a the last tail feather disappeared, Gretchen slammed the door shut
She sighed with relief as she flung the broom against the wall and plopped onto the nearest kitchen chair. Well, that certainly got the old adrenalin pumping, she thought. Don't know who was more frightened – that poor little thing or me. She calmed her racing pulse with several slow, deliberate breaths.
A beep from the communication monitor chirped, announcing Elise Pfeffer on the sending end. Gretchen opened the channel, hoping that she didn't look too bedraggled from her skirmish the local wildlife.
"Elise," she smiled at Phoebe's soon-to-be mother-in-law. "Good to see you! I just talked with Phoebe and she is delighted that you want to help with the wedding," she continued diplomatically.
Elise's expression rounded in surprise. "Are you sure? Please excuse me for saying this, but it looks like you just had a terrible time with her."
Gretchen smoothed back her disheveled hair and adjusted her tunic. "Oh, my; I probably look a mess. No, everything is fine; I just had quite a round with a bird." She laughed and tried to keep her story short about the avian intrusion a few moments earlier. But rather than putting Elise at ease, her words seemed to perturb her all the more. "What's the matter, Elise? Are you frightened by birds?"
"No… no, not by birds per se but by wild birds flying into the house," Elise managed, her voice in almost a whisper. "While I'm not really superstitious, there is that old story tale about a bird flying into the house or tapping on the window being a harbinger of death."
A chill shot through Gretchen as she suddenly recalled her grandmother telling a similar story and swearing that the predicted outcomes had happened in her family several times. Although she'd never thought much about it, for some reason, Elise's words struck her like a bolt from the blue. Whatever had dredged up such a bizarre memory? Things like this happened – birds had flown inside the house before without evoking the macabre or any morbid consequences. It had to have been Elise's expression that prompted her thoughts.
"Oh, that old story has floated around my family for generations," Gretchen laughed, hoping that her fleeting feelings would not show. "Why, Phoebe and Kathryn even nursed back to health a meadowlark that once flew inside our house and managed to break a wing while there. Nothing horrible occurred following that. Things like this happen."
Elise's face morphed into a more relaxed state. "I'm sure you're right. Just my already stressed nerves playing games with me. And you said it was a blue jay? I think the bad news story involves only black birds of some type." She waved her hands as if shooing away the bird herself. "Enough of this wild talk – let's get down to business and get this wedding off and running."
Gretchen settled back in her chair. "Right! We'll show these young folks how smoothly we 'old' people can still manage big projects."
For the next forty-odd minutes, the two mothers gleefully plotted a detailed strategy for their offspring's' nuptial celebration.
Six more weeks until Phoebe and Eliot's wedding – six more weeks of locking details into place and working out problems that sprang up more quickly than a grassfire on a Kansas plain.
To top things off, Gretchen hadn't heard from Kathryn since four days into her current away mission; she didn't even know where her older daughter was, only that the assignment was to keep her away for a month or two. But don't worry, Mom; we'll be back with time to spare before the wedding, Kathryn promised. Gretchen snorted; she'd heard that line before. After all, Kathryn was a third generation 'Fleet officer in their family. But just because of that, Gretchen knew that she had to patiently wait and see… and work out a contingency plan, just in case.
Her over-worked communication monitor chirped with an incoming request.
"Accepted," she replied and turned to see Owen Paris on the screen.
"Owen! Has Julia conscripted you into service with the wedding?" But even before he spoke, she noticed lines and shadows that went beyond the norm for his sixty-six years. Her breath quickened and her heart doubled its pace – she had seen that look before, the first time with her father's Starfleet death and again when Edward died.
"Gretchen…" Owen began.
He didn't have to say anything; Gretchen knew. "Kathryn – something's happened to Kathryn!"
"Actually we don't know." Owen's words came slowly, painfully. "It's the ship – Voyager. We haven't been able to contact her for several days. At first we thought that some sort of interference with our subspace communications prevented our being able to make contact, but usually that is rectified within a few hours. Lieutenant Trezu is an excellent chief engineer and of course Kathryn knows Voyager inside out, thanks to Theo Patterson and the time she spent with him at Utopia Planitia. I would think that they would have been able to jury-rig some way of coming up with an alternate…"
Owen speech faltered, as he almost gave in to the obvious pain coursing through him. Finally, he managed the words Gretchen knew he was trying to get out. "We think that the ship is gone."
An ominous silence fell over the man and woman as they each assimilated the significance of the fateful words.
Gretchen's face became a stony façade, her eyes neither tear-filled nor angry. "Gone? What do you mean… gone?"
"I think you know what I mean," Owen said, his voice heavy with words he couldn't say, with emotions that Gretchen wouldn't allow. "I want you to know that we are not giving up on them, but for now, we've run out of ideas. With the war still going on and everything…"
"Where were they?" Gretchen spat out in a brief spurt of emotion. "What were they doing? Can you at least tell me that?" She didn't like being spoon-fed the canned public relations message she knew to be the 'official' word from Starfleet.
"You know I can't elaborate on the mission, but I can tell you that they were not in an active war zone. It wasn't totally without danger but there was no indication of Cardassian or Dominion activity in that sector. Captain Sisko at Deep Space Nine implemented several shuttle surveys and deep probes for Voyager but couldn't find even tachyon residue beyond the ship's last known location."
Owen gnawed on his lip, knowing that he had probably allowed too much information even with his abbreviated explanation.
Gretchen's stoicism returned, her face and body again unreadable. "I appreciate you yourself contacting me, Owen; it means a lot. I'm sure you and Julia are feeling perplexed and anguished, too, with Tom's being aboard Voyager."
"There are over a hundred families going through what we are, if there can be any solace in numbers," Owen said. "In some ways, it's easier to report an injury or worse to a family; this not knowing anything is as devastating as a cancer eating away at you."
"I'm sure the same is true for you and Julia." Gretchen cringed thinking what it must be like for the man to have to deliver this message when he himself was as anguished as those whom he contacted. He appeared to age by the second as he continued talking – poor Owen was taking the disappearance of the starship and its crew much harder than she was.
Gretchen should be feeling despair; she should be grieving, but she wasn't. Was this wrong? She must look cold and calloused to him. But she had been through all of this before and her body automatically built an emotional wall around her. And as she grew older, she know that that wall had to support not only her but also those around her, that she must be the rock and foundation on which others depended. Owen was like her extended family, and she must give him that strength, too. She held be hand up to the screen, gently touching the image of Owen's weary face. "I hope you don't have many more of these calls to make."
The despondent man appeared to welcome her concern; a glimpse of relief briefly relaxed his demeanor. "No, you are the only crew family I was charged to contact." He swallowed. "Actually, I requested it; Starfleet didn't even want me make any because of my personal connection with the situation. But with the longtime closeness of our two families, I knew that it would be best for you to get this news from someone whom you… uh… trust."
"Thank you, Owen. I know how difficult this has been for you."
"Will you be all right?" he asked.
"I could ask the same of you," she responded. "We must remember that there are over one-hundred and fifty other families who are irrevocably bonded with us, and that none of us will truly be all right until we have answers."
"And I promise that I won't let Starfleet let up in searching for those answers." Determination took over the anguished look in the man's face.
"Then that's what I need for right now. Please keep me informed."
"You will be the first to know if we find out anything," Owen promised. "Take care."
"The same to you," Gretchen nodded, realizing everything had been said that could be said. "Give my love to Julia."
Owen's image faded from the screen. Just as a bird in flight fades into the shadows of evening, Gretchen thought as the screen went to gray. Edward's little goldenbird. My little goldenbird! Have you flown out of our lives or are you just out of sight, soaring in another meadow?
"The bird!" she suddenly cried out, as memories of the avian intruder a few weeks back brought panic to her mind. Was it truly a harbinger of this horrific news? "Get a grip on yourself," she continued in a mumble. "It's just a silly superstition. Besides, after that brief chase, the bird flew out again, none the worse for the experience." Maybe the bird represented Kathryn and whatever happened: flying into the unknown, facing uncertainty and possible death.
Gretchen's stoical façade crumpled with the sudden thought. She willed her now-rubber legs to stumble to the nearest chair. Now in a defeated slump, the tears she'd held back while talking with Owen began a barrage. The bird… and her little bird. Where was she? What had happened? Why not even a molecular trace of the ship's existence?
Memories flooded her, meshing and twisting and overlapping in a myriad images: losing her own father; taking ballet lessons with her sister, Annie; her marriage to Edward; their first years in Indiana; Kathryn and Phoebe, so different and yet so alike; the horror of Tau Ceti Prime and how in spite of her own grief, she had to be there for Kathryn, too. Now, as she was in the waning years of her own life, felt secure in the happiness of life successes for each of her daughters, once more tragedy encroached with stealth and anguish.
"Why Kathryn – why not me? I've lived my life; her star is still rising." Her uttered words came more as a prayer than a question, a prayer repeated infinite times by innumerable mothers over untold millennia. A mother should not outlive her children. Memories would always be there but memories never replaced the actual flesh and blood. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. My children, my soul.
Gretchen wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to capture her absent daughter's being, in spirit if not the physical. Everything around her ceased to be – no sight, no sound, no touch, no motion. Only a mother's soul searching for her lost, crying from depths she did not know existed, an abysmal agony beyond comprehension. Tighter and tighter her arms squeezed in a python-like grip until she could barely breathe.
Perhaps it was oxygen deprivation exacerbated by her slowed breathing or the residual wisps of her torrent of memories, but in a brilliant flash, a stanza from a long-forgotten poem zapped into Gretchen's thoughts:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
With those words, Gretchen dropped her arms, opened her eyes and smiled with the epiphany that was born:
Voyager is not gone; Kathryn and her crew are not harmed or dead until I allow myself to admit it. And I won't – not until I have irrefutable proof. Neither will I allow any of the other Voyager families become despondent and without hope. I will not allow any broken winged birds in my house – we heal injuries and allow birds to fly.
I call myself a realist… a pragmatist. But dreams are what give us our sanity – dreams give us hope. Without them, we are nothing but organic algorithms with no wings at all. The universe is more than the absolutes of mathematical reasoning and physics; it wants us to keeps those wings and fly as far and as high as we can. And I do dream; I've always had dreams.
With new resolve, Gretchen squared her shoulders, ready to take on the challenge. It would not be easy and the journey would probably be long and daunting. But she knew what the first step would be: contacting Phoebe.
As soon as Phoebe's distraught image appeared on the monitor, Gretchen knew that her younger daughter had heard the news already. Why not? Bad news always spreads faster than the good.
"Mom…"
"Shh; I know, sweetie – I know." Phoebe suddenly was four years old again and had tumbled on her scooter; Gretchen wanted to fold her within her arms and rock her.
"Why won't they tell us anything other than they think Voyager is 'gone'? Why all the secrecy?" Phoebe's words dripped with vehemence.
"For once I don't think there is any secrecy or even innuendo," Gretchen said calmly. "I honestly think that Starfleet is as baffled as we are. Owen Paris himself called me and he truly seemed as upset and perplexed as you and I are. Although he didn't say, nor did I ask, I think that the powers that be decided that something had to be publicly stated as they were being asked why families had not been able to contact members of the crew. Now I know better than to try to do that, but then there are people who have sons or daughters who are on their first deep space mission – of course they would wonder and be concerned."
"And you aren't concerned?" Phoebe snapped. "How can you be so calm about all of this?"
"Phoebe, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned – I am, more than I ever hope you'll have to be. Call me a doubting Thomas but I won't believe any worse case scenario until I have proof positive that Voyager has been destroyed or that the crew is no longer alive. A wise person once told me that by worrying today about tomorrow, you double your worries."
"But what we've been told… that's not worrying; that's what is now!"
"Then we live with what we have," Gretchen said. "As for me, I think that we do have hope, however slim. Until that sliver disappears, I'm going to hope."
Phoebe lowered her eyes as she attempted to understand her mother's precarious optimism.
Gretchen remained silent for several moments before dropping a bombshell. "I think we should go on with plans for your wedding as scheduled."
Shock drained the blood from Phoebe's face. "Why… how can we do that? It just wouldn't be proper!"
"Why not? We aren't truly grieving, although the way things are some might think so. But celebrations and traditional events have gone on during difficult times for eons. Besides, I think that our friends would welcome some sort of normalcy at this time, sort of a confirmation that life goes on – which it does – even when it's overwhelming." Gretchen swallowed and drew a breath. "And I'm sure Kathryn would like you and Eliot to go ahead."
"I'd like to discuss things with Eliot," Phoebe said, her voice still heavy with doubt and indecision.
"Of course! After all, this is all about the two of you. But I just want you to know that I'm behind you one hundred percent, whatever you decide. Take however long you need, but don't cut the time too short. That date is only a few weeks away."
"Don't remind me – I know only too well!" Phoebe managed a slight grin only to turn somber again. "Mom, I'm worried about you. Do you want me to come to Indiana?"
"That's thoughtful of you, my dear, but no; I'll be fine. If I need you, I'll ask – I promise. I haven't lived this long without weathering a few storms. Call it midwest tough."
"Okay, but I'll touch base with you early tomorrow. I love you, Mom."
"And I love you, sweetie."
One more time Gretchen watched a pained expression disappear from the monitor. She hoped that Phoebe would eventually understand her feelings.
She walked over to the window watching the light weaken to bring a close this long day. Her thoughts held firm toher earlier resolve: Voyager is out there somewhere and Kathryn and her crew are alive – I know it; I can feel it. They will return.
The love in a mother's heart knows what the mind cannot comprehend.
~ fin ~
Author's Note: The poem quoted in this story is "Dreams" by Langston Hughes