Author's notes:
- OK, I have an announcement to make: Star Trek broke me! I was the queen of fluff, as you can gather by my first two stories, and now I'm drowning in angst. Thanks a lot, Star Trek, I've become the instrument of my own suffering.
- This has not been beta-ed. I've just finished writing it and I'm eager to share. Which, to sum up, are excuses I use to feel better about myself and the fact that my English is not perfect. So, yeah, if you feel like it, please point out any mistakes you find and I'll correct them.
- If you want some music to help you set the mood, search for Erik Satie's "Gnossienne no.3" on Youtube. That's what I kept replaying while writing this.
- All the stories I've written so far have been named after Chet Baker songs.
- You'll see a sentence marked by an * somewhere in the middle of the text. That sentence is not mine, it's by Charlotte Brontë. I'll explain afterwards.
- Also, reviews are love. As usual. :D
You're My Thrill
I often think back to our first encounter.
There was nothing extraordinary about it. In fact, I must have met half a dozen other people that day, and none of them made any impression on me. So it seemed odd that I should have singled her out, or rather, that she should have caught my attention the way she did.
Most people would probably blame it on appearances, and so did I at the time. She is a very attractive woman, and she was already very beautiful then. Everything would have been easier had that been the real reason. Which it wasn't. I'm sure at least one of the other women I met that day was appealing. And I didn't think about them for the next 25 years. If appearances were the key to this problem, then it's only logical to assume that I would have felt like that more often in my life. Now I know that it was very naive of me to dismiss those feelings as purely physical.
I can see how I made that mistake, because my attraction to her was in no way platonic. And I was much more comfortable with denying that whatever I felt was strong enough to render me incapable of restraining my thoughts. Because, whatever it was, it was there from the start. And that brings me back to what drew me to her.
You see, there are many reasons why I fell in love, but I couldn't have known they existed a mere half hour after we were introduced. Still, there was something different about the whole situation. And now I've had many years to ascertain what it was. I realized, much later in my life, that it would have been impossible not to notice her, because she had the exact traits that made her irresistible to me.
We each have our weaknesses, our inadequacies... Situations we might find more desirable or less; people around whom we might feel more comfortable, or less... Some might have an irresistible urge to care for others. For them, the charm may very well be in the sadness they see in somebody's eyes, or in how isolated that person seems to them. Others might feel attracted to the exact opposite, and become fascinated by one who is attentive and thoughtful. In my case, however, she managed to bind me to her by allowing me to come and go as I pleased. Inadvertently at first, yes, but that's exactly what happened.
What I dreaded most, those days, was being coaxed into settling down, or into giving up my career for a relationship. But I never once thought she'd be capable of asking me anything of the sort. On the contrary, she seemed to value her independence as much as I valued mine, and her career as well. So much so that I distinctively remember thinking I might come to view her, someday, as a person who wouldn't weigh me down. But rather would be by my side, as an equal, as someone who shared my views on what life should be like.
Actually, that was a very accurate first impression. Over the years, she's never tried to influence the decisions I had to make, concerning my own life, so that they would suit her. Ironically, I had no idea, back then, that someday I'd be the one left behind. I didn't know that I'd be the one in a position where I had to stop myself from asking her to take me into consideration before making her choices.
It would have been rich, coming from me... to ask her not to accept the highest position she could ever achieve, as head of Starfleet Medical, because I didn't want her to leave me. She left her son behind. Her son. How much could leaving me possibly have influenced her decision? You can't expect someone to conform to your needs, specially not when you've been keeping those needs hidden, only ever acknowledging them when it's late and you can't sleep. And not when you strive to keep your relationship with this other person as strictly professional, when you push her away at whatever cost.
Which is why I ended up saying something appalling like "the crew will miss you", and spent the next year reliving the look she gave me then. It was a look that seemed to mean "well, I'm glad I'm going, you deserve it!"
So she left. Because she didn't care enough about me to stay, I told myself. That's how it works. If she leaves, she leaves you. You're important enough to be central to whatever she does that hurts you. If she comes back, she comes back because of her son. You're not important enough to have anything to do with the decisions that please you.
This is how you stifle every urge you have to tell her and to touch her. By undermining yourself to her in your mind. And by undermining yourself to her in reality. Treat everybody by their first names, but call her by her title. Accommodate everybody on the ship, but be exacting when it comes to her. That'll teach her not to look at you like that!
And what was her crime? Did she look at me with adoration in her eyes, you ask? Did I see any signs of the blind devotion I so dreaded in my younger years, for fear of what it might entail? No. She looked at me as if she knew me, as if she accepted whatever I was willing to offer, and whatever I wasn't willing to give. That was her hideous crime: being accepting and non-judgmental. In sum, being exactly what I wanted her to be.
You'd think that her being free... from marriage, that is... would be easier. My feelings of guilt and loss aside, it wasn't. Those first years of their relationship, when I considered myself so wronged, when I thought that the universe owed me something because, one night, Jack told me he was in love with her before I had the chance... Well, during those years, everything was a lot more manageable. I wanted to think about her, but I didn't allow myself to do it, which worked half the time. And the more Jack went on and on about how he felt, the harder I tried to suppress my own thoughts. In comparison to how difficult it was to do the same years later, when she was already my CMO, and when I no longer had Jack as an excuse, those first years were blissful.
Only they didn't feel that way. Jack liked her for the wrong reasons, and he failed, at least in the beginning, because of that. And when he failed, I easily saw how I could have succeeded.*
In retrospect, I can admit that it was easier to let her go than to expose my feelings to either of them. I had no guarantees. No guarantees that Jack would understand or that she would accept me... And even if they did, what if I allowed myself to let her come first? What if I gave up on career opportunities, what if it then didn't work out between us?
And so I watched as she finally gave in to him. I watched the two of them get married. I watched as they raised a family together. And then I watched him die.
I chose to let her go, and that is not what I regret.
I regret that I ultimately wasn't able to stop myself from thinking and wanting, not even after they were married. Certainly not after we began to spend so much time together, the three of us. I regret that I was self-indulgent to the point of convincing myself that, as long as it was in front of Jack, it wasn't dishonest. I didn't even look at her when we were alone, and I barely spoke. But when he was with us... No, when I was with them, I allowed myself to be as courteous as I wanted to be. I complimented her, I listened as she talked about work, I touched her arm, I bought her books and I made Jack go wherever she wanted us to go. I remember how he smiled, how pleased he was that I seemed to get along with his wife. Poor, dear, stupid Jack...
I regret that, years after he was gone, I made her pay for my misconduct.
So, you see, I deeply resent the circumstances, aggravated but certainly not caused by Jack's death. He was my friend and I didn't have anything to do with what happened. Nevertheless, I felt as guilty as if I had killed him myself. Not because of any ill-wishing from my part, but because I knew that my behavior hadn't been beyond reproof. It didn't matter that he didn't know. I knew. Maybe she did, as well. The fact that he didn't only made it worse. So I promised myself that I'd never tell her how I felt. Proper punishment disguised as loyalty.
I never told her. And yet, she's still the first and last thoughts I have every day. Hers is the face I seek out when I enter a room. And I constantly try to determine for how long the smell of her hair will linger after she's left my quarters.
You go through life and you realize that you should be angry that you didn't get more out of it. I should be angry that I find delight in pouring her tea and watching her eat every morning. I should be angry that I even notice that she leans against me when we're walking or standing side by side.
I should be angry that it makes me happy. But not very happy. Just happy enough so I'll keep my promise.
the end
* When Jane (Eyre, "Jane Eyre") was pretending not to obsess over the way Miss Ingram was throwing herself at Mr. Rochester, she mentioned that, with every attempt to fascinate him, Miss Ingram actually managed to repel. "When she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded."