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-v-v-v-
"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
To His Coy Mistress
—by Sir Andrew Marvell
Synopsis for Part 6: Our hero walks a lonely road.
Part 7: Ten Years Before the Flood
Stardate: 56487.58539446999 (June 27, 2379, Time: 23:14:53)
Dorvan V Reconstruction Colony, Dorvan Planetary System, Former Demilitarized Zone
He had been gone a long time, much too long in her opinion. The coffee she had made was at least an hour old. She tried not to give into her growing fear. It was Chakotay, after all. He would return. She just pushed too hard in her vexation, and he had left when the situation became more than he could handle at the time. It was his way. A good thing. He would walk through the door soon enough, calmer, ready to reason. All she had to do was wait.
She had never seen him quite like this, however, even during their worst days in the Delta Quadrant. Depression was purportedly her specialty, not his, and she was unsure of how to proceed. Sekaya had tried to warn her. His despondency alarmed her to the extreme.
There was a noise, a faint shuffling sound. She drew in a quick breath from her seat at the table, raising her head, anchoring her toes around the front legs of her chair to keep from rushing to the door to see if he returned. The shuffling grew louder, was immediately followed by an angry snarl and the earsplitting chatter of wild rodents. Dropping her head to her forearm, which lay immobile —like a dead skink, across the worn surface of the table, she forced down a staccato flaring of disappointment. The chattering continued for another minute or so before finally dissipating. The animals moved on. The scratching of protracted claws against the weathered planks of the front porch ending abruptly. All other sounds faded into the still of the night, and she was left listening only to the sound of her breath.
Inaction, the breeding ground of perseveration, was a place she never felt comfortable visiting for long. With a frustrated sigh, she rose, deciding to busy herself by settling in. She deposited her luggage into the largest of the rooms at the back of the house. (The only room Chakotay had not previously converted from a traditional place of rest into a Borg Alcove, used as a workshop, or study). Then, sat down on the edge bed, as she kicked off her boots. Socks, slacks, and shirt soon followed, her arms and legs practically sighing in relief as she exposed them to air. Briefly, she remained, sitting in tableau on the bed, trying to appreciate the sensation of cooling down. Her hair gathered in one hand away from her neck; head angled toward the inside of her arm. Her natural inclination to investigate her surroundings was decidedly absent. Alone in the house, Chakotay's house, alone the bedroom he had undoubtedly shared with his young wife, made her like an interloper.
Only the room, itself, seemed to be waiting, anticipating her inspection, calling her to uncover intimate secrets she had no right to explore.
The rodents returned and started up again, this time, to scuffle beneath the bedroom window. They began to screech at one another, hiss and spit intermittently, growl and grind teeth. She reached for the travel canister to retrieve her nightgown, attempting to focus on the simple task of changing clothes. Focus on something other than the dreadful, growing, grating noise as she stripped off the remaining vestiges of her clothing —plain white cotton fabric replacing all.
The animals, thoroughly absorbed in their wretched squall, continued to play ill-trained musician on the tightly wound strings of her fraying nerves. She covered her ears, tried to blot out the sounds. The grunts and the squealing kept on, the territorial squabbling elevating not only in volume, but in pitch. Near impossible to block out, it left her skin feeling as if the inner layers were peppered with bits of broken glass. Unable to stand it any longer, she threw open the window and shouted, "Shut up you foul monsters, or I'll come out there with a phaser and blast you into dust!"
Silence, venerated and euphonious, reigned supreme.
"I'm not sure that would be altogether wise." Chakotay's voice broke through the new-found silence from behind. "This is dry country and a stray blast could start a fire."
Kathryn leaped away from the window and around to face him, only to encounter the door somewhat ajar. She scurried across the room, ushered him in.
His hair was wet, slicked back as if he had taken another shower, but he wore the same tatty garb as before, minus the shirt. The pants, turned inside out, were now badly wrinkled and crusted, here and there, with what appeared to be red sand. He held out a modest bi- metal cube covered with a mesh-like screen in one hand. "It's an Atmospheric Control Unit," he said. "Antediluvian by Starfleet standards, like most things, here, but it'll take the edge off the heat."
She moved in for a better view. He smelled of the outdoors: faintly algal, and of some unrecognized, indigenous, bloom. Furtively, she took stock: canvasing the copper-bronze fingers, the wrist of his extended arm for signs of injury; the forearm; bicep; the work-hardened span of his abdomen and chest. She was relieved as she found none. She wanted to shout at him, shake him, hug him close, then maybe tie him to a chair, but that would hardly be appropriate. Not to mention, Chakotay was a man of pride. It would not do for him to know she worried.
"Press the red button on top to increase air output," he instructed. "The blue and green ones regulate temperature and air flow."
She took the cube, searching his face, her own visage carefully neutral. "Those animals outside. What are they?"
"Nocturnal Scavengers, indigenous to the planet. They're harmless as long as you don't get too close."
"Are they always so loud?"
"Yes. They don't usually venture this close to the house. They aren't fond of humans, but it's their mating season and the males tend to be less cautious. A good shout is enough to scare them away. I don't think they'll come back tonight."
"Good." One corner of her mouth lifted in satisfaction. He nearly smiled back. Almost, but not quite.
It broke her heart. The cube slipped from her fingers. It blundered loudly to the floor; the clattering sound of it jarring —out of place in the quiet, killing whatever sense of ease burgeoned between them.
Chakotay cleared his throat, bringing himself up to his full height. He backed into the doorway. His broad physique, eating up the empty space inside the frame as he settled into a practiced stance: shoulders straight, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back. "There are extra blankets in the closet though I can't imagine that you'll need them." His vocals were disciplined, complanated. His chocolate gaze fixed dead ahead, not on her.
Kathryn fortified herself with a ridiculously arid intake of air. She understood what he was doing, threatening to shut her out in a simply regimented, but deceptively innocuous way that was all-too-familiar. It was opening step of an old routine. One she had choreographed herself in the Delta. Don't make me do this, she thought sadly, Not this way. He'd jumped her cue. She'd have to join him on the floor. "You know why I am here, Chakotay?" she posed, suddenly "all business," as she hijacked the moment.
He responded with a curt nod.
She drew no quarter and continued, her tone both arbitrary and brusque, "Our EMH has devised a new treatment that should permanently re-suppress the gene causing your hallucinations. The procedure is relatively non-invasive and will be performed at the Whispering Man Mental Health Facility on Betazed. You will complete twenty-five, mandatory weeks of intense on-site psychological therapy in lieu of probation. After which, you will be evaluated. If your brain scans show no further signs of abnormal activity, you will be released back into the Community-At-Large...I am granted title as your temporary custodian until we arrive on Betazed. Lieutenant Paris will serve as pilot and make the necessary adjustments to your anklet to allow you to travel before he flies us out."
He remained in the doorway: parade rest, refusing to look at her, glaring at a holo picture mounted on the wall behind her head. His pulse ticked furiously beneath his jaw, his expression one of choler, grief, and rebellion, all combined. It was a blessing he hadn't forced her from the dwelling or cut and run. She stayed the course. Pushed at the soldier in him, a Starfleet captain upbraiding her factious commander, her words coming out intentionally caustic, "This whole venture is strictly voluntary, but you aren't stupid. This is not the life you're meant to lead. Sekaya has already packed you a bag. We leave at 0700:00. That's in 6 hours. You might want to get some sleep."
Chakotay offered little more than the same murderous expression in reply, the taut muscles of his arms and shoulders vibrating imperceptibly with self-contained insurgency.
Kathryn picked the ACU up off the floor and chucked the cube onto the bed. It bounced up, then down, rolling a few times before taking refuge at the foot of the mattress. She decided to join it and sat down, palms and fingers placed on the outsides of her thighs. Her nightgown billowed outward, landed in a gather between her knees. The casual intimacy hinted at -by her attire, so glaringly at odds with her demeanor, it contributed to an unwelcome, creeping sense of emotional bankruptcy. She clamped her legs together, felt the fabric bunch up in-between.
The room enclaving them seemed to mobilize, resounding his silence. It ricocheted off the objects within, composing in-articulated songs to her. Boxing gloves, dangling from their laces on a nail beside the window, hummed with a corn-husk doll mobile tacked into the ceiling above the bed. A classic novel, bound in leather, warbled mutely from the nightstand —a book he'd borrowed long ago; a gift from Mark, a book of hers. The room, like Chakotay's quarters onVoyager, like his house, spoke volumes. The items in it held more than repeated stories, more than just the memories of the person suffering in front of her.
Kathryn conceded to a truth: something more than Seven's shadow had kept her from nosing around.
She had grown to depend on him, to trust him through a necessary distance. Dictated the terms of their friendship through it, taken from him without giving back because of it. And, to this day, he had accepted it —even though the action sheared away the roots of who he was. All so she would never have to ask.
Distance no longer served a purpose.
"Why are you still standing there like that, Chakotay?" she exacted, rancorously. "We've danced your little dance; I've bully-ragged you, and now we're done. Are waiting for me to dismiss you? Is that it? Well, I won't. I don't have that power, nor the right to do that to you, or for you, anymore. Someone pointed that out to me recently. It was upsetting, but it turned out to be true. Irksome, but freeing as I think on it, and kind of scary. I can say to you exactly what I think and feel, not what I presume I should." The admission left her sheepish, but she foraged on. "I lied to you earlier when I said I didn't understand. I know exactly what you're doing, exactly how you feel. You've done something you deem unforgivable. Something you can't live with. It follows you about, hanging on your heels, dragging you down so you can barely walk. I went through it in the Delta Quadrant, remember? A time or two after I deliberately got us lost.
"You want to punish yourself," she asserted, hunching forward, placing her weight onto her elbows, into the determination to do right by him, by them both, her hands folding into her lap. "You don't think you deserve to be happy. Maybe you don't. What I think is immaterial and not for me to judge."
He continued louring at the picture on the wall. A propulsion of red seeping up through the cords of his neck and staining his cheeks, the only sign her monologue hit home.
It wasn't enough.
Kathryn sprang from the bed, lodging herself in front of him and gripped him by the shoulders. His eyes widened, his body stooping toward her as she arched back —hailing him to look her. His mouth worked inaudibly for a few seconds, his forehead wrinkling, compressing the inky, tattooed triangle above his left eye. Words managed to escape him in a rheumatic surge, "The wound must be honored." (14)
They imbued her with frustration, with hope and fear. "Okay. Go ahead. Honor the wound. By all means, honor the wound until Earth's moon turns to cheese or the stars all burn out of the sky. But do it properly, with your mind and body fully intact. Otherwise, you'll merely perpetuate a lie."
She released him, groping for what she should do next. Her hands were shaking, her knuckles turning white as she balled her fingers into fists. She bumbled to the bed, plunked back down on the edge of it, striving for self-ascendancy. "You think this is solely about you? And Seven? It's not." She raised a clenched fist, pushed it up through the air, striking uselessly at the crinkly artifact suspended above. "Sekaya deserves more than this after everything she's lived through. She lost her mother and father to the Dominion. Then you, only to be held captive by Cardassians. She's finally getting her life together, and you give her this?
"What about Tom? He should be home right now, instead of waiting out here for you to come around. At the rate you have us all going, Miral will be a grown woman before he sees his daughter again... And B'Elanna?" She laughed, mirthlessly, a bitter peal in her ears."There are a lot of words I can think of to describe you Chakotay, but 'selfish'? This is new." She pointed at the picture on the wall —a still-life of the senior staff, taken on the Bridge, her voice rising with realization, "Command doesn't end along with the mission. Our people are trying to reconstruct lives in the Alpha Quadrant. Family members died while we were gone, husbands and wives remarried. So much loss. Our crew still looks to us as to lead. They need to see you punch out on this. I need to see you punch out on this —eject and abort from this misery quest that you're on. After everything we've dealt with, the sacrifices made —everything you and I have and haven't been to each other, you owe me." She grabbed at the folds of her gown, twisting the cloth into a tortured knot before letting go. "I didn't fight this hard to get us home to watch someone so important to me be hollowed out by grief and guilt. It's a knife in my chest, and I'm bleeding inside. I can't make you do anything, and I promise you I won't try, even though we both know that I'm right. I'm not asking you to forget, only to get well...
"Please, Chakotay," she entreated, tightly, unable to stem the tide of flowing words, "Please. Don't make me beg you anymore, because I will." Kathryn shut her eyes before he could respond, scrunching the lids together, determined not to break down. Surely, she had lost her mind. She was behaving like an idiot.This isn't working. I will regain control.
She heard him, afoot, traveling from the door to the bed, his bare feet thudding heavily across the polished tiles of the bedroom floor. The mattress shifted as he sat down beside her. The addition of his greater weight causing her to roll against him. She froze in place.
"I expected you sooner, you know." He sounded precariously weary, but calmer, if not resigned.
It was music to her ears. She linked her arm with his, relaxing, purposively, against him; offering him her strength, comfort in the form of physical contact. Something they both needed. "You live in out in the Boonies. Even I have to abide by Warp Speed Restrictions." She felt him decompress: a muffled, fragmentary half- chuckle in reaction to her comment. Her spirits literally soared. "Besides, I had that other stop to make."
In a split-second, he went rigid. Her eyes flew open. She cursed herself, her stupidity, as he scooted from her.
Chakotay thrust his right hand through his wet hair, studying the drops of water left deposited between his fingers as he pulled it away. Remorse etched into his nearly perfect features like markings on a stone relief. Compressing his lips into bloodless, wrinkled bow, he turned toward her, his eyes, deep-seated, liquid wells of pain. "Seven needed someone with her," he wrangled out. "I'm grateful, Kathryn. It was only right that it was you."
His naked acquiescence of the truth made the statement much more painful. She wanted to console him, but couldn't think of what to do or say. He acted first, haltingly, placing his dampened hand on her left shoulder. The gesture, awkward in its execution, was well-meaning and meant to reassure.
She slid in, close beside him, and put her arm around his waist. His hand automatically shifted from her one shoulder past the next, his arm cradling her neck, as it had nowhere else to go.
Petered out, she let her head loll against him. They had gone through so much, together. It felt right to hold him; the rightness of it integrating them, legitimizing that thing that had always lived between them. That inherent thing-that-never-was and yet-somehow-still-existed, ratified, in a way it never had before. Kathryn relished in the feel of him, the concentrated human warmth, his quiet strength, the smooth, satiny texture of his skin. The precious, arrant familiarity of someone she held so dear.
She pressed her face into his neck, her dabbled, bantam nose taking in his scent, her lips puckering daintily into the uncompromising line of his jaw.
Chakotay jerked up, his body colonnade-ing, involuntarily. He shuddered, his grasp on her suddenly much tighter; then he fell torpid, his breathing shallow to her ear.
"Chakotay," she said, seriously.
"Kathryn." He elongated her name, prolonging each syllable. It came out warily. As if he might not like what he was about to hear.
"How is it you can love me after all this time?"
The answer came succinctly, without hesitation. "In k'áatech tuméen taan amen in."
It was evasive, so quintessentially Chakotay, it caught her unaware. She broke out in a grin. "I don't know what that means."
His heart accelerated, beating erratically under his arm, within his chest, into her side. "I love you because you love me."
Notes: Parallel Lines: Ten Years Before the Flood,
kneipho 2008, 2015, (2017, Line alteration:
Frmly. "They need to see you win. I need to see you win." to "They need to see you punch out on this. I need to see you punch out on this -eject and abort from this misery quest that you're on.")
"In k'áatech tuméen taan amen in." (Orig: Ten cin yacunticech tumen tech ca yacunticen.(famsi -David and Alejandra Bolles)
(14). "The wound must be honored." — The Fight (VOY, Season 5)
