Written for Round 19 of the Trek Rarepair Swap on Tumblr. Helen8462 talked me into joining, and I was delighted to be assigned to write for her.
This story obliquely references my story "Cupped Fists." It is not necessary to read that one first (although I certainly hope you will read it eventually!)
The ritual, linguistic concepts, and other cultural elements depicted in this story are a hodgepodge of a few ideas from various cultures, indigenous and not, and more ideas from my own imagination. No part of my story is meant to represent any specific Native American culture or its people.
This story takes place seventeen years after Endgame but is not consistent with the Relaunch novels. Series canon does not figure greatly into this story but can be assumed as backdrop, with the notable exception that C/7 never happened.
Warmest thanks to Mia Cooper, who midwifed this story from some truly awful beginnings and past the hot mess monster draft stage over a period of weeks, as well as to Little Obsessions, who provided an additional last-minute beta read and said things that made me blush.
Chapter 1. Arrival
The two-week journey by civilian transport had been a bad idea, leaving B'Elanna restless and irritable, entirely the wrong frame of mind for this visit. She should have pulled strings to requisition a test shuttle, or something that would have offered more privacy, or, at the very least, found a ship making a direct flight. Through her weary aggravation, she berated herself again for her lack of foresight, for having thought that all that mattered was getting a nice long break from Jupiter station, from Tom, from their shared quarters that always felt empty now.
Then she glimpsed Chakotay in the distance, coming to meet her flight, and chided herself more for thinking that anything had mattered besides getting here for him.
She hadn't seen him since the memorial service on Earth, almost a year ago. She didn't feel she'd seen him even then. He'd been a ghost, and they'd all been in shock, puppets on autopilot in dress uniforms, the formality of protocol a bizarre refuge from reality.
Chakotay's sister had taken charge, removing him promptly to Dorvan. There had been messages back and forth for a time, neither B'Elanna nor Chakotay saying very much - what could anyone possibly say worth a damn? Then there had been messages she sent to him, with no response.
And then B'Elanna had run out of things she was willing to say, and there had been silence for months.
You don't, she reasoned, tell your newly widowed best friend that your own marriage is falling apart. That your husband, unlike your grieving best friend's wife, is still alive and well but that you just can't live together now that your child - the goddaughter of your newly-widowed, childless best friend - is grown and gone. Telling him would feel like ripping away his own family, what's left of it. Like burning down his house while he's away burying his wife.
Not that there'd been anything left to bury. Kathryn Janeway was no more. No more than atoms drifting inexorably towards the nearest star. No more than memories made nightmarish by the raw grief left in her larger-than-life wake through so many people's lives. The thought filled her with resentment and the desperate need to move to hit to fuck to do something to push away the awful pointless mortality of it all.
As he crossed the plaza towards B'Elanna now, Chakotay was clearly still floundering in the turbulence of that enormous loss. His hair, suddenly more salt than pepper, hung lank in his eyes, shoulders hunched around pain where his heart had been. She'd seen him with a beard before, but never one this unkempt.
Looking at the changes wrought in him, B'Elanna suddenly wondered for the first time whether Kathryn's death had helped to precipitate the dissolution of her own marriage. The thought felt profoundly selfish. She was here for Chakotay, at his request, to honor Kathryn's memory. Not to blame it for her and Tom's own shortcomings.
He came to a stop three steps distant, hands in his pockets, eyes old over a smile too grim for dimples. "You came," was all he said. His eyes flicked past her, then around the open space. Looking for Tom, she knew, but didn't acknowledge.
She felt eyes on them from the surrounding crowd. His presence was still magnetic; grief and pain hadn't undone his essential charisma. His gaze returned to her and something faltered in his expression. She realized her arms were crossed over her chest. "Of course I came," she replied, bending to pick up her bag.
He began to reach out a hand as if to take it from her but then hesitated. Finally he just said, "This way," and started walking back across the plaza toward the road.