A BRIEF SHAKESPEAREAN INTERLUDE
Inspired by "Mortal Coil." I am an unapologetic Shakespeare nerd. I had no problem with this episode, except this: If you are going to name your episode with a quote from Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy, you darn well better play out its full significance. To do anything otherwise is just shallow. So that's what I did. Play it out. But I had a bit of fun with it, too.
A BRIEF SHAKESPEAREAN INTERLUDE
The last night of Prixin.
Traditionally an evening to spend in quiet, joyfully remembering those who had gone and those who were far away before returning to the living family for shared warmth. A solemn night, spent in peaceful contemplation. Heartwarming but reflective. It was Janeway's favorite night of the celebration.
She spent an hour alone in her quarters lighting a candle for her father and mother, her sister and dog. Justin. Mark. There were tears, as there always had been. She let them fall. Years ago they had ceased to be tears of sorrow. She remembered her mother's eyes, her sister's smile, her father's voice in happy times, and wept quietly at the joy of it. Far away but always with me. She repeated the Talaxian phrase over each candle she lit.
Missing them was a fierce ache that she knew would never leave her, not as long as Voyager continued to travel through the Delta Quadrant. But lately she had learned to focus her thoughts not on the future joys she would never experience with them -- the joys she had undoubtedly already missed -- but on those moments she had lived through with them. Laughing uproariously with her sister and mother over a heaping plate of caramel brownies. Squirming under the pride in her father's eyes when she excelled academically. Resting in the arms of a lover.
She sat back on her heels, smiling at her reflection in the window. The candles lit the little room with a warm glow, adding to the starlight that constantly streamed by. It is good to be alive, she thought. We are small and the universe is vast, but we are not alone. We are in the arms of family.
She rose from the floor, still smiling, and turned away from the candles. As always, she left them burning brightly when she withdrew from the room.
The corridors were quiet, peopled only with a few crewmen in civilian clothes hurrying to join friends at the formal dinner Neelix had prepared in the galley. Janeway nodded to them, greeting them with affection and camaraderie. They treated her with respect, as always; though the last night of Prixin was a night with no ranks, she was still the Captain, even out of uniform. Inescapable, that rank. A mantle that she shouldered comfortably, without complaint, without reservation.
She slipped into the galley unnoticed, keeping to the fringe of the gathering so that she could watch them together. Neelix had removed the buffet and set out long tables where a few people were already seated, waiting patiently for the chef and his volunteer staff to serve the meal. There was quiet music, something she didn't recognize, and the room was lit only by rows of candles decorating the center of each table. Warm and intimate, close.
B'Elanna and Tom approached her from the side, arm in arm.
"Captain! Join us at our table!" Tom smiled a friendly smile, his blue eyes bright. "Harry's helping to serve this year, so you can have the seat we saved for him."
Janeway glanced across the room, to where a tall figure stood alone. She inclined her chin in that direction. "I think maybe you might give that seat to Seven, Tom."
B'Elanna and Tom followed her gaze, then glanced briefly at each other. B'Elanna came to some decision and nodded curtly. "You're right, Captain. We should have asked her sooner."
Janeway overlooked the room again. "Have you seen Commander Chakotay?"
Tom coughed discreetly into his fist. "I talked to him this afternoon. He said he had some things to think about before he came to the dinner this year."
Janeway frowned. "Do you know where he is?"
B'Elanna shrugged. "Where he always goes to think, I imagine."
Nodding, Janeway turned from the room. "Save us seats, Tom, B'Elanna. We'll be here in ten minutes."
She didn't see the smile they exchanged as the door closed behind her.
She found him in the forward observation lounge, sitting in a low chair with his feet braced against the bulkhead. There was a book open on his knees -- a real book with paper pages, sewn into a leather binding. It couldn't be one of his, unless he had replicated it. She doubted he would go to the trouble. She approached cautiously, quietly, studying his face reflected in the window.
He was troubled; though his expressions were always somewhat guarded, she had learned to read them over the years, and now she recognized the deep frown, the unsettled lines around his mouth and eyes. He was contemplating the pages before him with fierce concentration, reading each line carefully, stopping occasionally to ponder the words. Looking up suddenly he met her eyes in the window and his frown eased a little.
Janeway smiled. "What's that you're reading, Commander?"
His lips turned up slightly. "'Words, words, words.'"
"What?"
Leaning back he leaned toward her and held up the book for her inspection. "Hamlet."
Janeway took the book from him and turned it over in her hands. "Where did you get this?"
"Tuvok loaned it to me."
"I thought it looked like one of his." She inspected the ancient binding with appreciation. "He's had these for years. He started collecting them as a young man. I didn't realize he had them on Voyager. He completed the set right before we left the Alpha Quadrant."
"Right before he infiltrated my crew, you mean."
Janeway started to protest, surprised that he would think of reopening that old debate after so many years, on this of all nights. But he waved the words away. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."
"What did you mean?"
He sighed softly, turning back toward the stars. "I don't know. I've been thinking about some things ever since this business with Neelix."
"Such as?"
"'To be or not to be. That is the question...'"
She quickly moved around the chair to face him. "You're not thinking--"
"Of course not. I'm surprised you'd even ask."
"Then what is it?"
Chakotay shook his head slowly. "Faith, mostly. Neelix had his shaken this week in a way I can only imagine. A lifetime of faith, Kathryn. He was ready to give it up."
"But he didn't."
"No. But it made me wonder... I came to faith much later in my life. How would I have reacted if I had been tested in the same way?" He took the book back from her and opened it on his knees. "Hamlet is afraid to kill himself because he doesn't know what comes after death. No one does. His life is bad, but he fears the afterlife will be even worse."
"But he doesn't know that."
"No. And that's what makes him stop -- what 'gives us pause,' as Shakespeare wrote. But now Neelix does know, or thinks he does. There is no afterlife. There is nothing after death. The promise he'd lived with his whole life, the faith he grew up with, he thinks it's all a lie."
Janeway lowered herself into the chair beside him. "And what do you think?"
He closed his eyes and looked away from her. "I think I should have listened to him more carefully. I think I should have known he might try something like that. I think... I think I was very lucky that Sam came when she did, because I was running out of things to say."
Janeway reached out tentatively and touched his hand. "You don't blame yourself for what happened, do you?"
"I don't know," he said softly. "Maybe. I talked to Seven that night. She told me what Neelix had said to her that afternoon. In retrospect she realized that he was trying to say goodbye. But I can't blame her for not seeing it at first. She learns fast, but she has very little experience with human interactions. Anyone else would have been suspicious."
"But he didn't talk to anyone else."
"He talked to me -- or I talked to him. That's more accurate." Chakotay shook his head slowly. "He was confused and upset, but he wouldn't tell me exactly what he was thinking. When he didn't show up for our scheduled meeting I should have been more worried than I was."
"You were worried," she said intensely. "You left the Bridge to go talk to him."
"And what did I do? I ordered him to come to my office. Ordered him!" He let out a harsh, mirthless laugh. "That couldn't have helped the situation."
"No, it probably didn't." She withdrew her hand. "But it goes back much further than that, Chakotay. If you're going to blame yourself for not being worried enough, then you need to blame us all." He looked up at her and she proceeded, knowing she'd surprised him. "That first night of Prixin he wasn't himself, well before the vision quest that you helped him experience. We all noticed it, but no one did anything about it. No one but you."
He seemed to mull that over. "I did offer to talk to him, didn't I?"
"Yes. He asked for the vision quest, remember? You didn't force him into anything. You didn't force your beliefs on him, any more than you would force them on me."
The realization crossed his features slowly. "And I warned him it wasn't a quick fix, that the vision had to be carefully analyzed for its true meaning. But he acted on his own, before we could work through the significance together."
"Exactly." She smiled warmly at him. "So you can stop blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong on this ship. Your sphere of influence simply isn't that wide."
He laughed softly, shaking his head. "Aye, Captain."
"Now. Come with me to dinner."
His smile faded. "You go ahead. I think I'll skip the dinner this year."
Janeway sat very still, watching him turn back toward the windows and lower his eyes to the book. Chakotay never missed their shipwide celebrations. He'd even come once with a regeneration unit strapped to his leg and the Doctor protesting his every step. But he'd come.
Something must be very wrong indeed if he was thinking of skipping the Prixin dinner.
"I've never known you to miss a meal, Chakotay." She leaned forward in her chair. "Is there something you want to talk about?"
He gazed at her for a long moment, then forced a smile. "It's nothing. I suppose I'm just not in a celebratory mood tonight. Go on without me."
"I don't want to go on without you."
The words hung between them as each heard the unspoken significance in them. Janeway considered turning them into an awkward joke with some flippant word or gesture, but noting again the unsettled look in his eyes, she knew she could not. She reached out tentatively and touched his arm.
"I don't want to go on without you," she repeated, more forcefully this time. "Tell me what's wrong. Maybe I can help you work through whatever's bothering you."
He grimaced. "The way I helped Neelix?"
"Chakotay."
He shook his head and sighed. "I'm sorry. I seem to be saying a lot of things I don't mean tonight."
"You're not yourself. I can see that. Talk to me. Let me help." She leaned forward again, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Let me make your burden lighter, Chakotay. Just once."
She'd surprised him with his own words; she watched him take a shaky breath, nodding slowly.
"All right," he murmured, eyes downcast. "Just once. Can I ask you a question?"
"Of course." She straightened in her chair, steeling herself for whatever personal question he might ask, steeling herself to answer as honestly as she could, regardless of the command barrier that constantly separated them.
"Kathryn... Do you know how the akoonah works?"
She sat back fractionally, surprised at his question. She'd expected something deeply personal, something about faith or death or the afterlife. But not this, not a question so mundane and practical that she almost laughed her relief out loud.
"I never thought about it. I suppose it alters consciousness so that the user is more open to...suggestion."
He nodded. "It mimics REM sleep -- the dream state. It allows the conscious mind to receive and interact with images from the subconscious mind."
"Like conscious dreaming."
"Yes. The point is that the akoonah only dredges up thoughts and images that are already there. The vision quest isn't interactive. It's a completely closed system."
"I'm sure that isn't what you told Neelix. And I know it isn't what you told me."
"No. But it's true. I've always known it intellectually. But in my heart..." He scrubbed a weary hand over his face. "In my heart I believed there was something more to the experience, something that can't be explained by conventional science. Now I know better." He closed his eyes, his voice very low. "When I talk to my father in the vision quest, it isn't really my father. It's my image of him, yanked out of my subconscious and put on display for my amusement."
"You don't know that."
"My father is dead, Kathryn."
"His body is dead." She reached out and touched his arm, felt the tense muscles beneath his tunic. "But his soul lives on. His spirit --"
"There is no spirit."
Janeway stared at him, too shocked to speak. It was something she'd learned to count on over the years, the fact of his unwavering faith. He was occasionally stubborn and often foolhardy, but his calm faith gave him an air of assuredness, even when he was naive in defending it. It was his foundation, his rock, and he was hers. But now...
She leaned close to him, her shoulder brushing his, lending support. "You told me once that Kolopac's insistence that you must find and protect Seska's child wasn't what you expected to hear from him."
He gave a sharp, humorless chuckle. "It wasn't."
"Then if the Kolopac in your vision was only an image from your own mind, wouldn't he have told you what you wanted to hear? That you bore no responsibility for that child, and that you weren't obligated to recover him?"
He seemed to relax a little, turning her words over in his mind. Then he shook his head. "Not necessarily. Maybe in my heart I knew I had to go after the child. Maybe my subconscious was trying to tell me the right thing to do, even though I couldn't consciously face it."
"But why in the image of your father? You said it was the first time he had ever appeared to you in a vision. Why then, of all times?"
"Because I needed an authority figure to tell me. Because I had just become a father myself -- or thought I had." He grimaced, a pained expression crossing his tense features.
Janeway paused, surprised at the depth of his internal conflicts -- both the present crisis of faith and the old wounds from long ago. "But isn't it possible," she said softly, "that some part of your father lives in you? That there is a...a spark of his spirit that you were able to touch that day?"
He turned to her for the first time in many minutes, a look of astonishment on his face. "Do you really believe that?"
"I don't know. Maybe." She shrugged and waved her hand at the vast space before them. "I do know that here in the Delta Quadrant, I have seen and experienced phenomena that I can't explain. Science can solve many mysteries. But it can't solve them all."
He smiled suddenly, holding up the book in his hands. "'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"
She laughed. "Something like that, yes."
He glanced at her, mischief in his eyes. "You know, that's quite an admission for you."
"What is?"
"The acknowledgment that a solid system of scientific knowledge might not be the triumphant culmination of human thought."
She mulled that over for a moment. Melodramatic though they were, his words were very close to the truth. "You're right. I suppose that is a startling admission from me. Four years ago I wouldn't have made it. But lately I've had a very good teacher."
"Oh really?"
"Yes. Maestro da Vinci is --"
"Da Vinci!" he groaned. "Not da Vinci again?"
"Of course. What could you possibly have against da Vinci?"
He shook his head. "Kathryn, if I had known you were so fond of long gray whiskers, I'd have stopped shaving years ago."
She laughed softly, eyeing him from beneath lowered lashes. She couldn't imagine him with a beard the length of da Vinci's, but with a trim beard, dark but shot through with silver...
Dashing. A proper revolutionary -- or a pirate king. "If I didn't know you better, I'd be afraid you were jealous of da Vinci."
"Jealous of a trick of light? I don't think so." He smiled, a little shyly. "But I do miss the time we used to spend together off-duty."
"Do you?"
"Yes. Though I'm in much better shape because of da Vinci. The more time you spend holed up in the Holodeck, the more time I spend playing hoverball with B'Elanna."
She reached out and squeezed his upper arm. "So I've noticed. I suspect you've been turning a lot of heads lately."
"So have you, with that new hairstyle of yours."
Janeway blushed furiously, suddenly realizing that for weeks she had thought he hadn't noticed the change -- and that she was unaccountably disappointed by his apparent indifference. "I thought you hadn't noticed," she murmured.
"Of course I noticed." She could feel him staring at her, a slight smile in his eyes. "I notice everything, Kathryn. But sometimes it isn't appropriate to comment."
The atmosphere seemed charged. Janeway stood abruptly, struggling up toward clearer air.
"Well. I should go to the dinner. Are you sure you won't come?"
He stared up at her for a long moment, as if struggling with some indecision. Then he shook himself visibly and rose. "I'll come, but only if I get to sit at the Captain's table this year. Last year I got stuck with Chell and Tuvok. Didn't make for very pleasant dinner conversation."
Janeway laughed, feeling the tension in the room ease. Without a thought toward the consequences, she slipped her arm through his and led him out of the observation lounge and into the turbolift. "After the dinner, why don't we come back here and you can explain Hamlet to me. I never appreciated Shakespeare in high school. Maybe if I had a more attentive teacher..."
He smiled down at her. "I've always liked Shakespeare, particularly the histories and tragedies. Though if I'm going to be your tutor, maybe we should start with something more accessible than Hamlet -- and more appropriate."
"Such as?"
He leaned toward her as the galley doors opened, revealing a joyous feast in full-swing. "Well, The Taming of the Shrew comes to mind," he whispered, and turned a sly grin on her as he released her arm and sped toward the table.
"Just what are you implying, Commander?" she called after him.
"Not a thing, Captain. Not a thing."
"I am not a shrew, Commander."
She'd said it considerably louder than she should have. All eyes in the galley turned toward her, and a hush fell over the room while she stood there, furious and amused and embarrassed. She raised a hand to wave off the room's attention, but Chakotay rose, staring at her with an expression of unabashed admiration.
"Come sit by me, fair Kate," he called.
After a moment's hesitation, she raised her chin and marched to the empty chair by his side. An amused ripple followed in her wake, then died down as the diners returned to their dinners.
She mustered a fierce expression and leaned close to him. "I am definitely not the one who needs taming in this scenario, Chakotay."
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound seeming to come from the depth of his soul. It was good to hear.
It is good to be alive, she thought again, sensing him watch her discreetly, mischief in his eyes. We are small and the universe is vast, but we are not alone. We are in the arms of family.