A/N: This is for my dear friend Ailtara. It's not a silver pocket watch, but I hope it satisfies just the same.
My usual bouquet of gratitude to MiaCooper for her impeccable beta skills. One very specific suggestion made this so much better.
This fic is set the evening Kathryn Janeway returns from Quarra.
Warning: Mild Explicit Content
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting."
-Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
She can hear the precise and faithful ticking of the timepiece by her bedside. Intricate gears, hidden by an old-fashioned face, click cog by cog as time trudges along. Her breathing slows and falls in line with the cadence. She feels as if her heartbeat does the same.
All else is quiet.
It is the first night in two weeks that she has spent alone and she only knows that it makes her uncomfortable on several levels. She pushes the memories from the false life which she has just left out of her mind and focuses on the only sound in the room.
She has had the pocket watch in her possession for a little over three years now, she realizes, recalling the happy anniversary of her birth. She had blushed when he presented it to her along with a fistful of flowers and a bottle of wine that they had shared. Their future, she thought at that moment, was still wide open for the taking.
But time has had a funny way of screwing them both over since then, she muses. And thirty more years to go is about thirty-seven too many.
Since the evening he gave her the watch, she had maintained the same routine. Readying herself for sleep, she would brush her hair while sitting on the edge of the bed, then she would pull the timepiece from her drawer. Reflexively, she'd smile, wind it exactly five turns, and set it reverently on a silk handkerchief. Then she would let the ticking lull her to sleep, knowing full well that her ever-patient companion lay resting just down the hall.
It had also become routine that as she would drift off, she would recall the words they had spoken during the day, recount the intimately small gestures they had gifted each other. It wasn't the same as curling up in his arms, yet somehow, it was always enough.
But today is different.
There were no flowers, no grand or familiar offerings made on this day. Except, of course, for the fact that he had rescued her once again. And she was glad to have been rescued. She told him as much and she hoped that he believed her. Other than that, there were very few words to recall as she lay there in the dark.
The movement of the mechanism sounds colder to her and more unforgiving since she'd had to restart it, she thinks. Resetting the time and speeding past the minutes which had been lost on Quarra seems like a shallow thing to have done. Because those minutes hadn't simply been lost, they had been spent with someone else, someone who had made her happy in the way she had only ever imagined that he would.
Each tick is a harsh reminder of every second, every minute, and every hour which she spent with that other man.
Each tick is an admonishment of every moment she's wasting out here in the middle of nowhere with her excuses and her boundaries, and her happiness patiently waiting right down the corridor.
She's feeling old - in her bones, in her soul, in her mind. She is feeling weary from the journey, weak from the stress, chinks in her resolve.
Guilty from the choices.
Her hand finds its way above her head and she twines her fingers through her hair. She pulls, just a bit, and the tugging sensation tingles and aches across her scalp – it reminds her that she is still alive, that she can still feel physical things and not just the passage of time.
With a sigh she unwinds her fingers and rests the back of her hand across her forehead. The watch continues to tick.
Three weeks gone. It could have easily been a lifetime.
Seven years gone. And a lifetime to go.
It takes only a few hours of tossing and turning in the dark for her to allow her thoughts to wander back to Jaffen. It surprises her that after such a short time they already feel like nothing more than a blur. But it is a happy blur. In the loneliness of her room on this night, she begins to question. Is she really grateful for having been rescued?
Yes, of course she is.
But, she had been happy. She may not have loved him, not in so many words. How could she have? She didn't even know who she was. Regardless, she had been pleased in ways that had long since been forgotten. Jaffen's touch was so gentle and kind, attentive and full of promise. Caresses of hands and lips, soft professions and the excitement of a new relationship were overwhelmingly wonderful. How long had it been since she'd allowed herself those experiences? How long would it be until she craved them again?
They were still close enough to Quarra. She could go back, convince Jaffen to stay, make him part of this life. But no, she shakes her head and says the word out loud. "No." And now it is final. If she's relaxing her principles it will be with the man she really wants.
So then she begins to wonder, are caresses and professions what she really craves? Down deep, is that what she wants? Or, more to the point, is love what she deserves?
As she lies there, listening to every punctuated second, she knows in her heart how the man residing down the hall feels for her. She doesn't need to hear his confession for it to be true. And so, shallow as it may be, all she can really ask for is to feel alive, to feel wanted, to be pleasured. And she wants to do all of those things in this life, not that other fabricated one.
But she won't forgo her duty. So, what else does she have to work with?
The holodeck. An instinctive, disgusted groan works its way out from behind her lips. No, no more of Michael Sullivan or Lord Burleigh, or any of the others she had tried desperately to eke satisfaction from throughout the years only to leave feeling full of shame. They always paled in comparison to what she so obviously needed.
It will be late in the night before she dares to think explicitly about who it is that she really desires. Very late, in fact. Past the point in time where any kind of reason or morals, or values of honor, or thought of friendship or discipline is found.
At that hour she finally allows herself to imagine what it would be like to throw all caution to the wind. But she won't dare think about him as a true lover, one who would share her bed and her heart. No. It would be too hard. The only fantasy she will allow is where he is a means to an end.
So many times at night, she knows, he must lie in bed, hoping, praying, and envisioning that she would come to him as she will come to him now. She's sure that he has yearned for her to finally relinquish her control and give into that which they both desire, to share souls and bodies. But even in this fabricated way, she won't give in to everything.
With strict boundaries in place, she's moving swiftly to his quarters - absolutely sure of what she will find under the weight of his body. And consequences be damned, she will find herself there.
She stands in his doorway, the flowing fabric of her silk robe pulled tight over considerably less clothing. She wonders if he perceives her as a figment of his imagination.
"Kathryn?" he says, as the door hisses shut behind her. She doesn't answer him. Purposefully - as if summoned by an alert – she goes to the chair where he sits reading. In those seconds she watches him as he takes in her figure. She must appear to him as heady and wonderful and she feels womanly and strong as she descends upon him.
"Are you okay?" he asks, rising from his seat in more ways than one. She knows he wants to reach for her in that moment, to hold her close and tell her that whyever she is here, he will make it alright. Because, no matter what, he's always there to ease her burdens.
"I'm fine. I just…." For a fleeting moment she feels ashamed. She considers turning away and leaving by the corridor through which she just came, she considers opening her eyes and taking a cold shower instead. But, resolve washes through her. She hopes instead that he knows why she is there – in his quarters – like this, flushed and laced with arousal.
And then, in a blur of movements, she takes his hand and guides him away. Before long and not of his own doing, his clothing finds its way to the floor and she's lying, legs spread on the end of his bed.
He stands before her, confused but not entirely ready to stop what she is asking for. She rises up and reaches for him, immediately she shows him what is needed just in case there is any doubt.
Her words urge, then demand - and she knows he will be all too happy to oblige - but not before he asks, "Kathryn, are you sure," and is met with the slightest of nods.
He tries to lay down kisses and caresses but she can't allow herself to accept the more intimate gestures, so she diverts his hands and dodges his lips. She lunges for him, taking him between her fingers and stroking until she finds his full potential in her grip and then with one fluid motion she sheathes him within her. The contact is so jarring and raw he gasps and grabs at the edge of the bed.
She watches his eyes trace down to the sight of himself disappearing into her, then he peels his stare upward once again. His loving, tender gaze does not at all mirror her own expression, for her eyes are now squeezed shut. And while he whispers affectionate things against her neck, her moans are escaping through clenched teeth.
When she finishes, and it doesn't take long, she shudders strong and raw around him. The words that finally escape are "yes", and "God", and "please," but never his name.
Hanging on as she falls down around him, she wonders if he hopes - since she has been satisfied in the way she so obviously needed – that he will be given the chance to make love to her, at his own pace, rather than just be used by her.
But she knows that's not why she came here. She came here to feel alive, to finally give in, just a little. And to replace the memory of that other man who never should have been allowed to have her in the first place.
As soon as her faculties are returned to her, she removes his hand from where it had been resting on her center, where it had tempered and felt the power of every thrust. She slides back and he falls from her. Then, and only then, do their eyes finally meet. She sees his, full of want and love and tenderness. And all of those things instantly flash to confusion.
She knows her own expression betrays satisfaction first, followed by shame.
She gathers her robe from underneath her, pulls it quickly about her shoulders and yanks down the skirt to cover the evidence of her pleasure – where he had been used. Without another word, she is out the door.
The illusion shatters. With real eyes open now, her vision clears, her breath steadies. Her hand finds its way, slick with moisture, from between her legs. And then she is assaulted with an afterimage – him, calling out her name as he spills for her onto his empty bed.
Through her heavy breath she hears the watch, still ticking.
With each beat of her racing heart she is reminded of what she won't have. She could never, in a million years, do what she had just imagined. And she won't abandon her duty to allow what they both deserve.
She closes her eyes briefly and exhales. The rest of the daydream dissipates and with it, her memories of Quarra are also abandoned.
Then, she lies against her pillow and listens once more to the passage of time. She slows her breathing back to its familiar cadence.
Just before she drifts off to sleep, she wonders if there will someday be a time when she perceives the pocket watch's movement between sighs of pleasure and requited professions of love, instead of against a backdrop of silence.