Author's note: Thank you to lynnki, Wileret, Anon, Guest, and Juddysbuddy for your reviews! Always appreciated.
Chapter 11
With Tuvok by her side, Kathryn was enjoying her walk down Market Street more than she had expected to; in fact, after a long day spent indoors, the fresh air and afternoon sunshine were enough to make her feel like a bird escaping from a cage.
The street was crowded with hover cars and pedestrians taking advantage of a welcome sunny day in San Francisco. Kathryn recognized many of the shops that she and Tuvok passed; it had been eight years since she had last strolled down the busy thoroughfare of Market Street, but it didn't look like much had changed. Just across the street she could see the Night Owl, a coffee shop she had frequented as a student at the Academy. And there in the distance was the iconic white clock tower of the Ferry Building, still standing more than three centuries after its construction, although the newer skyscrapers around it now dwarfed the structure.
As the elevated train whirred above their heads, briefly blocking out the sun, Kathryn turned to Tuvok with a mischievous look.
"It's a good day for destruction," she said.
Tuvok's eyebrow raised. "Indeed," he said, his voice as smooth and deep as ever, and Kathryn patted his arm with an approving smile. Whoever said Vulcans couldn't be good sports?
And there, just in time to satisfy her violent urges, was their destination.
Kathryn and Tuvok stepped into the comparative darkness of the building, and paused a moment to let their eyes adjust, as well as to get their bearings. Neither one of them had been to this targeting range before. Of course, they could have used one of the Starfleet ranges, but Kathryn was itching to escape the monotony of Headquarters for a little while, and so she had asked her assistant Chrissie to find another option.
After so many years of constant action in the Delta Quadrant, Kathryn was forced to admit she was having difficulty adjusting to what had essentially become a desk job, thanks to all these debriefings they had to endure. Maybe Tuvok was experiencing the same difficulty. Kathryn had been almost sure he would decline her invitation today, since his wife and children had taken up temporary accommodations on Earth and up until now Tuvok had been spending every moment of his off hours with them. But he had readily agreed.
Kathryn looked around the range with interest. She was surprised to see that nearly every booth was filled. There had always been some civilians who practiced with weapons simply as a hobby, of course, or because they lived on the edges of Earth's restored wildernesses and sometimes needed to protect themselves and their properties from predators. But she hadn't expected this facility to be so busy. Then Kathryn remembered something Owen Paris had told her: that after the Breen attack on San Francisco, there had been an upsurge of civilian interest in learning defensive techniques. Apparently many had realized that even on a peaceful Earth, bad things could still happen.
Kathryn and Tuvok approached the front desk and requested their weapons. The man disappeared into the back and when he reappeared, he was holding a bow and quiver in one hand and an ammo box in the other, with a long wooden rifle slung over his shoulder. He set everything down on the table and got out the safety equipment: eye and ear protection for Kathryn, and an arm guard for Tuvok.
When the man handed the rifle to Kathryn, she noticed that it was still warm to the touch; fresh out of the replicator, no doubt. This model must not be in demand often enough to keep on hand. Not surprising, considering it was more than 400 years old. She herself hadn't been familiar with this type of gun until she'd been shot in the leg by one during the Hirogen takeover of Voyager. After that, she'd made it a point to research it.
Now, seeing it again, her thoughts were inevitably drawn to France, 1944. By the time she had met "Captain Miller" on the holodeck, she had been liberated from the Hirogen's neural interface and knew herself to be Kathryn Janeway and not "Katrine," the holographic character who owned a French cafe called Le Coeur de Lion. But Chakotay hadn't recognized her, since he was still convinced that he was an American soldier tasked with leading the attack against Nazi forces in Sainte Claire.
Chakotay had behaved according to his character's parameters, of course, as his neural interface required, but in some indefinable way he had remained himself, too. She had taken note of that the moment Captain Miller had called Katrine "mademoiselle" in the same gentle tone that Chakotay had always used to call her "Kathryn" when the two of them were off-duty and alone together.
Despite the mess the whole French Resistance had made of their ship, after the crisis was over Chakotay and Kathryn had admitted to each other that they both missed carrying the guns their characters had used. Somehow Chakotay had convinced her to add Captain Miller's 1917 Colt revolver and the Mauser Karabiner 98K rifle to Voyager's holographic arsenal. Over the past several years, every now and again the urge would strike them again, and they would spend an hour or two side by side on the holodeck, gleefully blowing holes in targets.
Kathryn ran her fingers down the smooth wooden stock of her rifle and smiled to herself at the memory.
"Perhaps we should have invited Commander Chakotay," Tuvok said, settling his quiver securely across his back.
It was all Kathryn could do not to lift her eyebrow at him, Vulcan-style. How did he know she was thinking of Chakotay? Sometimes she could swear that Tuvok could read her mind without even touching her face.
But no, she reassured herself, it was only because Tuvok had once walked into one of their holographic shooting sessions to ask Kathryn a question about the duty roster. The odd sight of Chakotay wearing a World War II flak helmet - Kathryn had insisted that he didn't look right shooting that revolver without the helmet to go with it, and Chakotay had good-naturedly gone along with it - must have been seared into Tuvok's memory.
"I did invite Chakotay," she admitted to Tuvok. "But he had an appointment with his attorney he couldn't miss."
"I see."
Kathryn hesitated a moment, and then said," Mark is coming."
Did Tuvok's eyebrow twitch upward? "Indeed," he said, his voice as steady as ever.
For some reason, she felt the need to explain. "I was going to meet him for coffee at the Night Owl after this, but he called a little while ago and said his faculty meeting was canceled, so he's coming early and meeting me here. We can still shoot. He said he didn't want to interrupt my plans with you. He's just going to watch."
"Very well," Tuvok said.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked suddenly.
Tuvok finished tying the now-taut string on his bow. "As always, it is my wish that you should be happy, Captain," he replied.
It was an enigmatic response from a man who was fond of answering questions with a straightforward "yes" or "no," and Kathryn found herself glancing over at Tuvok repeatedly as they strolled through the range, heading past rows of civilians firing phasers, to get to the projectile-weapon section. Vulcan emotional control could be both a blessing and a curse, Kathryn thought. It almost seemed like Tuvok was out of sorts about the change in plans, but maybe she was just projecting her human assumptions on him unfairly. As Tuvok had told her repeatedly over the years, he had no ego to bruise.
They came to an empty booth, and Kathryn set her rifle against the wall and stepped back as Tuvok took off his uniform jacket and strapped on his arm guard. She would go practice on her own in a little while, but she couldn't resist the chance to watch Tuvok in action for a few minutes. For some reason, watching Tuvok on the archery range engendered the same feelings of awe and admiration that Kathryn often felt when watching her sister bring someone to life on a sketchpad. She had never really understood how an act that was inherently violent became a kind of meditation in Tuvok's hands, but she didn't question it. It was just how Tuvok was.
He had chosen a simple recurve bow, and now he held it firmly in his right hand, fitting an arrow to the string with his left. Taking a deep breath, Tuvok kept his dark eyes fixed calmly on the target as he pulled back the string until his knuckles grazed his left cheek. Another slow breath, and he released the string with a snap, the arrow swiftly embedding itself in the target 20 yards away. A beautiful shot.
Tuvok drew another arrow and prepared to take aim. The first arrow had struck the side of the target, but Kathryn knew from experience that once Tuvok's muscles were warmed, he would begin hitting it closer and closer to the center, until finally he would have to move the target back in order to challenge himself.
She leaned back against the wall and lost herself in Tuvok's quiet artistry for several minutes. When he had spent all the arrows in his quiver, Tuvok tapped a control and stepped back to wait for his arrows to be returned.
"I'm glad you agreed to come," Kathryn told him while they waited. "But I was surprised. You've been spending every moment of your off hours with your wife and children."
"Indeed."
"Making up for lost time?" she asked gently.
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "That would be impossible."
Stung by Tuvok's matter-of-fact statement, Kathryn had to rapidly blink away the moisture that suddenly blurred her vision. Tuvok paused and scrutinized her silently for a moment, and then said:
"My apologies, Captain. I was speaking in a scientific sense: time is linear, and once it has passed it cannot be reclaimed. I did not intend to convey criticism of your decision to destroy the Array."
"I know, Tuvok," Kathryn said quickly, trying to restrain her emotions. She had reluctantly realized years ago, after their trip through the Void had concluded, that it wasn't doing anyone any good to continue beating herself up over decisions that had long ago come and gone, and she had done her best since then to abide by that choice, as tempting as it sometimes was to return to that old, familiar guilt. "I know. But it's true the other way too, isn't it? You missed eight years of your children's lives. Years you can never get back."
"Perhaps," Tuvok said. He gazed at her steadily, and as she met his dark eyes, she was surprised to see a softness behind them. "I do not regret being part of our journey to the Delta Quadrant, despite the personal difficulties it entailed," he said. "But Captain, you should know that I blame no one but myself for the separation my family endured."
"You?" Kathryn blurted out, startled. It had never occurred to her that Tuvok would feel any guilt for what happened. Hadn't she been the one to give the order to destroy the Array?
Tuvok folded his hands in a meditative pose, a gesture Kathryn had learned often indicated inner turmoil in her Vulcan friend. "In retrospect," Tuvok continued quietly, "it was reckless of me to accept an undercover mission in the Badlands without fully considering the consequences to my family if I did not return. The responsibility for that decision rests on my shoulders alone. I should have given more thought to my duties as a husband and a father, which - unlike my Starfleet duties - cannot be adequately completed by anyone other than myself."
Kathryn nodded slowly. "I understand why you would feel-" She paused. "-why you would think that way. No one could ever replace you. But Tuvok, from what I've seen of your children, I think T'Pel did as well as could be expected in your absence. They seem well-behaved. Well-educated. Content, even."
Tuvok nodded slowly, and when he spoke again, his voice was a shade huskier than normal. "T'Pel is... a fine woman. She made many sacrifices to ensure our children's well-being."
Almost imperceptibly, Tuvok returned to his customary ramrod-straight posture, and continued more firmly, "It is my intention that she should not have to make such sacrifices again. I can no longer be so careless of my own safety as to accept high-risk assignments, at least until my daughter Asil has reached adulthood. I came with you today, Captain, because I wished to communicate this fact to you."
"No more high-risk assignments? Tuvok…" Realization slowly dawned on Kathryn. "Are you saying… that you don't want to work security for me anymore?"
She held her breath, almost certain that she had misunderstood him, but Tuvok dashed her hopes a moment later by stating without hesitation: "My desires cannot be my only consideration. I must consider my family's well-being. There are many in Starfleet who could provide security on a starship. My children have only one father."
"Oh, Tuvok…" This time, all the blinking in the world couldn't stop the tears from sliding down Kathryn's cheeks. "But where would you go? What would you do?"
"I have given thought to the matter over the last several years," Tuvok said. "I intend to return to teaching."
Teaching! She wanted to ask if he meant the Vulcan Institute or Starfleet Academy, both schools where Tuvok had spent years teaching before accepting her invitation to join Voyager's senior staff, but then she realized it hardly mattered. Either way, it meant she would see him only rarely. She stared blindly across the aisle at the civilians firing their weapons. Oh, she had known that things like this would start to happen now that they were home, but Tuvok… not Tuvok! She had counted on him to remain beside her.
Tuvok waited patiently by her side until she was able to get a better handle on her emotions. Finally, she dried her cheeks on her sleeve and turned back to him. "I understand, Tuvok… I know. Your family has to come first. I won't try to talk you out of it. But just let me be selfish for a moment. I'm afraid I don't know how to run a starship without you."
"You are more than capable of running a ship under whatever circumstances may arise," Tuvok said simply. "I believe you have demonstrated that comprehensively."
His vote of confidence meant more to her than he would ever know, but even still…
"Captain-" Tuvok said, and then he hesitated.
That hesitation, following such a blunt statement of his intention to resign from active duty, managed to catch Kathryn's attention despite her self-pity. What on earth could Tuvok have left to say that would cause him to hesitate?
"What is it, old friend?" she said, her curiosity driving out caution.
"It occurred to me," Tuvok said, "that perhaps you yourself would not be returning to space."
"Me?" Kathryn said, taken aback. Surely Tuvok could not know that she had been offered, unofficially, a step up in rank and a permanent posting at Starfleet Headquarters. Admiral Hayes had told her that in the strictest of confidences… he wasn't even supposed to have told her yet. And although she had been giving the idea serious thought, she wasn't at all sure she was ready to give up the excitement of service in space, even if she was burned out for the moment. She had a pretty good idea that the old restless spirit would return to her before long, once she had gotten a proper rest. It always did.
"In favor of spending time with your family," Tuvok added.
Family? Kathryn tried to cover her confusion. It was good to see her mother and Phoebe, of course, but they had their own lives to live, and now that they knew she was alive and well and she could speak to them at any time and even come home for visits, there was hardly a need for her to take a break in her career to be with them. Unless…
Suddenly she remembered that Tuvok had been privy to her career plan from before their adventures in the Delta Quadrant. She had intended to take a break to have a child with Mark after serving as Voyager's captain for three years, and she had shared her intentions with Tuvok the day she asked him to be her tactical officer, wanting him to have all the available facts before he agreed to leave his teaching assignment at the Academy to serve with her again. Was that what Tuvok was referring to? He knew that she was seeing Mark again. Maybe he assumed that their arrangement was back on, after an eight-year delay.
Or…
Tuvok knew how she felt about Chakotay, too. Probably. They had shared a mind-meld the very day that she had confessed her love to Chakotay, on a day when she had been full of hope that she could put Chakotay in command of the Equinox and finally be free to have a relationship with him without fear of complicating the command structure. Those hopes had been quickly dashed, but she was almost certain that Tuvok had become aware of them during the mind-meld. They had never spoken openly of it, but Tuvok had been unusually sensitive to her emotional needs ever since that day, particularly during the times when Chakotay was gone on a dangerous Away Mission, or injured in Sickbay. She could not have imagined that. He must know how she felt about Chakotay. He must.
She stared at Tuvok, trying to read his unreadable expression to figure out if he was anticipating her turning down a space assignment for Mark, or for Chakotay. And which one was she hoping for?
And why should she care so much which man Tuvok was envisioning her with? Was she hoping for a clue? She realized in the next instant she was being ridiculous. How the hell could Tuvok be expected to know what she wanted, when she herself did not?
"I apologize, Captain," Tuvok said, and she realized the silence had grown long enough to be awkward. "I did not mean to pry."
"No," she said slowly. "You didn't. I'm just… not sure what's coming next for me."
Tuvok studied her face carefully for a long moment, and then his eyes slid past hers and focused on something behind her. The next moment, Kathryn felt a hand on her arm and she jumped involuntarily, startled by the intrusion.
"Sorry, Kath," Mark said swiftly, chuckling. "I thought you heard me coming." She turned to see that he was dressed in slacks and a sports coat, looking every inch the college professor.
"Oh, Mark, you're here," she said stupidly, trying to recover her equilibrium. On her other side, Tuvok lowered his bow and came to stand by them both.
"Professor," Tuvok said politely.
"Tuvok," Mark said, holding out his hand to shake. "It's been quite a while. How are you? How are the wife and kids?"
"They are well, thank you," Tuvok said. "How are your classes this semester?"
"Oh, fine, fine. Don't let me break your concentration, Tuvok," Mark added quickly. "I didn't mean to interrupt. We'll get out of your way now and I'll watch Kathryn shoot."
Kathryn picked up her rifle and ammo box, but suddenly she was all nerves, for reasons she couldn't explain. Maybe she should have told Mark to keep to the original plan, and meet her at the Night Owl. Maybe...
"Would you like me to accompany you, Captain?" Tuvok asked blandly. "Perhaps I can offer assistance in improving your aim."
Improve her aim, when she knew this weapon far better than Tuvok did? Kathryn stared at Tuvok in consternation. He must have sensed her reluctance to be alone with Mark… how? They hadn't even been touching...
"No, no need, Tuvok," she said quickly. "I can manage."
"As you wish, Captain," Tuvok said serenely, and he lifted his bow once again and stretched the string back to his pointed ear.
Moving decisively, Kathryn took Mark's arm and headed back to the firearms section.
"How was your day?" she asked Mark, eager to fill the silence. Luckily, Mark seemed eager to talk.
"Oh, I had a terrific conversation today with Professor Hofmann today about aesthetics," he said readily.
"For a class?"
"No, we were just thrashing it out over lunch. We tend to do that. We were trying to settle on the difference between the beautiful and the sublime."
"Is there a difference between the beautiful and the sublime?" Kathryn asked, spotting an empty booth and heading for it. "I thought they were synonyms."
"Depends on who you ask," Mark said. "I say they can be the same, but not always. The sublime involves the quality of greatness, so some things can be great and beautiful, while other things might be great and terrible. It depends on the eye of the beholder, as you might say."
Kathryn set her ammunition on a table. "And what does Professor Hofmann say?"
"Well, he's a fan of Burke," Mark said. "That should tell you all you need to know. He thinks beauty and sublimity are mutually exclusive. One brings pleasure, and the other is born of pain."
"I'm not sure I follow," Kathryn said. "Here, hold this." She handed the rifle to Mark so she could free her hands to don her safety glasses.
"This can't be a phaser," Mark said, staring at the long wooden rifle as he held it gingerly in both hands. He seemed relieved when Kathryn took it back from him.
"No," she said, opening the bolt with a practiced hand and then selecting a stripper clip from the box. "It's a bolt-action rifle. The kind the Germans used in the 20th century."
Mark watched in silence as she loaded the rounds into the magazine, removed the empty strip and closed the bolt.
"Since when do you shoot antiques?" he asked. "No, wait, let me guess. You learned in the DQ."
"Remember those hunters I told you about, the Hirogen?" Kathryn said. "They put us in a holodeck simulation where we were fighting as members of the French Resistance, and I got to shoot one of these. Watch this." She put on her ear protection, adding: "You might want to cover your ears."
She raised the rifle, braced the butt firmly against her shoulder and took careful aim through the sight. After a few calming breaths, she fired.
The rifle bucked against her shoulder, and the sharp retort of the chamber firing echoed loudly through the range. Many of the other shooters paused to look over at them.
Kathryn lowered the rifle and ruefully rubbed her sore shoulder. "Bit more visceral than a phaser, isn't it?" she said with a smile, glancing over at Mark as he nodded in agreement.
She aimed at the target again, and slowly and deliberately fired again and again until the clip was empty. Then she lowered the rifle, removed her ear protection and looked over the target, feeling satisfied with the results. Her shots were grouping nicely.
"I'm confused," Mark said. "Did you say you used this gun fighting Nazis, or the Hirogen?"
"Both," Kathryn said, picking up another stripper clip. "He was the Beta of the Hirogen hunting pack, playing the role of a Nazi soldier."
"You mean... you shot an actual person with this gun?"
Kathryn paused again to look over at him.
"No, I shot him with a holographic representation of this gun," she said. "And he shot me with it first. I decided not to give him a second chance."
"I see," Mark said after a beat.
Thinking back on it, Kathryn could feel a wave of emotion building inside her, intense enough to warm her cheeks like a flush. It was an echo of what she had felt as the Beta stalked her through the corridors of Voyager: some combination of fear and fury and a rock-hard determination to survive. It was a familiar feeling, one she often experienced during battles, so she let it wash over her freely as she reloaded, this time closing the bolt without bothering to remove the strip.
She raised the rifle and began to fire again, more rapidly this time, working the bolt with practiced hands after each shot and pulling the trigger the moment she could re-acquire the target.
There was something so satisfying about the noise and the recoil, something she didn't get from firing a phaser. Chakotay had once compared it to the difference between a child's 2-D piloting simulation and actually piloting a shuttle through space, with all the bumps and vibrations and danger that came with it. Her accuracy was not as good when she fired this quickly, but nonetheless she was enjoying herself immensely. After she fired the last round, she began to reload without thinking, and then realized she had almost forgotten Mark was still standing there.
"Want to try?" she offered, holding the rifle out to him.
He didn't move to take it. "Can we go now?" he asked.
Kathryn appraised him closely - she knew that expression oh-so-well - and then said, "I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I?" She turned to face him directly. "I'm sorry, I don't remember you having an aversion to firearms."
"No, it isn't the weapons," Mark said quickly. "I may not be used to them, but I know you have to defend yourself out there. I just... I don't know why you would ever want to see this particular gun again, after something like that happened. With the… with the hunter you fought."
Kathryn looked at him for a long moment. "Sometimes you can't make yourself forget things like that," she said at last. "No matter how much you try to avoid reminders. Sometimes it's easier to just decide that you're not going to let the bad memories stop you from making good ones. I enjoy shooting this rifle. I refuse to let some foolish hunter with a death wish stop me from doing something I enjoy."
Mark still looked unsettled. Kathryn turned to face him fully, and explained in terms he could understand.
"This gun," she said, holding it in two hands, "is what you might call 'great' and 'terrible.' It isn't beautiful, but it is sublime. Understand?"
"Well," Mark said slowly. "I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I'll have to think about that."
Kathryn looked at him with narrowed eyes. "This is really bothering you, isn't it?"
"I'm fine," Mark said.
"No, you're not," she said.
"I am," he insisted. "I'm just... adjusting my expectations. I came here thinking I was going to spend the evening with Kathryn, and instead I found Captain Janeway waiting for me."
Kathryn was silent for a while, busying herself with polishing her fingerprints off the barrel of the rifle. Finally, she responded.
"You make me sound like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," she said.
"I didn't mean it like that," Mark said. "I'm thinking of you. I know how stressed out you get when you don't leave work at work."
She wasn't sure why she was feeling so annoyed with this conversation when she knew perfectly well that he was right: she did have a habit of bringing work home with her, and it was Mark more than anyone who had taught her the skill of dropping the captain persona as readily as she could shed her uniform at the end of the workday.
This was her cue to stop talking about battlefields and resume talking about philosophical aesthetics, a mental switch she had made so many times before during her years with Mark that it was now second nature, but for some reason unknown to her, the next words out of her mouth were:
"You don't."
Mark gave her a puzzled look.
"Leave work at work," Kathryn clarified. "You don't do that. Last week you started debating me in the middle of a restaurant."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know it bothered you," Mark said.
"It didn't," she said. "It's who you are. I like that about you." She paused. "Taking my work home doesn't stress me out, Mark. And I'm just one person. Kathryn and captain." She paused, remembering what "Captain Miller" had said about Katrine, and a smile touched her lips. "No matter which way you look at me, I guess I'm just a gung-ho kind of gal."
"Gung-ho gal?" Mark's brow creased with confusion. "What does that mean?"
Kathryn raised the rifle and squinted down the sight. "It means I'm not like the girls back home."
"Why do you think it bothered you so much?" Joan asked. "Having Mark differentiate between Kathryn and Captain Janeway like that?"
"Because," Kathryn said, putting down her coffee cup with a clunk and meeting her counselor's eyes firmly, "it isn't as though I'm only one or the other at any given moment."
"Although," she added more slowly, "to tell you the truth… I used to be."
"When was that?" Joan asked.
Kathryn blew out a slow breath. "I suppose it started when I switched to the command track. In training they tell you that as a leader, you have to put on a professional front so that the others feel they can depend on you. Getting too familiar with subordinates leads to a breakdown in discipline. Over the years, I just… learned to compartmentalize myself. When I was assigned to a mission, I was all business. Then I would go on leave, and I could go home to my family - and later to Mark - and I could be myself for a little while. It became the rhythm of my life."
"So what changed?" Joan asked.
"Voyager," Kathryn said simply. "Due to circumstances out of my control, I no longer had any designated times or places to be just-Kathryn. I didn't notice it at first. I spent the first year or so as Captain Janeway, doing what I had always done. But over time I could feel the stress mounting, and the reality started to sink in that until we came back home, I would never be able to take leave again. Oh, there was always a day or two of shore leave on the odd planet here and there, or an hour or two on the holodeck, but even then, I had no one to…" Her voice hitched a little. "No one to go home to."
"No chance to take 'Kathryn' out for a little fresh air," Joan finished softly.
Kathryn nodded wearily. "Exactly. I didn't cope with it well. I got frustrated. Short-tempered. And then our resident Talaxian must have noticed the problem, and apparently decided to become my solution, because he suddenly started getting familiar with me whenever he saw me outside of staff meeting, trying to talk to me more like a friend than a captain. Once, he managed to drag out of me what my favorite dessert was, and then he took me down to the Mess Hall late that night and attempted to make my mother's caramel brownie recipe, all the while trying to wheedle even more personal information out of me."
"You didn't like it?" Joan asked.
Kathryn smiled a little. "It was very sweet of him. Very...thoughtful. I resisted at first because, as I said, I was trying to put on a professional front for my crew. But at some point, I convinced myself that Neelix didn't really count, since he wasn't in uniform, and I let him see Kathryn sometimes. And Kes too…" She felt her heart throb painfully, as it always did when she thought of Kes. "She was very young. Very trusting. It made it almost frighteningly easy to talk to her. I even talked to her about Mark sometimes. I had just reached a point with Kes when she was the first one I thought of when I needed to be Kathryn for a while… and then she left us." She laughed a little bitterly. "But by then the damage was done. 'Kathryn' started popping up anywhere and everywhere, in the most inappropriate places. I couldn't seem to contain her anymore."
"For example?"
"I'm almost embarrassed to say," Kathryn admitted. "One day I let Neelix talk me into dancing 'The Dying Swan' in front of the entire crew for a talent show, if you can believe that. Not long after that, Chakotay committed me to having dinner with him once a week and forbade me to talk about work, which forced me to be Kathryn for a whole evening at a time. Then one day I found myself cracking jokes with Tuvok about mating rituals… on the Bridge. Things went downhill from there. I won't even tell you about the day I dressed up like the Queen of the Spider People for my helmsman's holodeck program. "
Joan smiled appreciatively. "I bet your crew loved that."
Kathryn shook her head ruefully. "I don't know if they loved it… but I did. At some point, I lost track of when I was Kathryn and when I was Captain. I was both, almost all the time. And now the two of them are hopelessly entangled, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get them apart again."
"Is that such a bad thing?" Joan asked.
"I think it is for Mark," Kathryn said softly. "I don't think he knows Captain Janeway, not really. She's never been anything more than an abstraction for him."
"Maybe this will be his chance to get to know that side of you."
"Maybe." But Kathryn felt uneasy in a way that was difficult to define. Mark had lived his entire life in the safety of Earth's atmosphere. Could he ever truly understand the environment that had shaped her into what she now was? There were times during the debriefings when she sensed that even the admirals in the room, despite being personally acquainted with the dangers of open space, did not fully appreciate the severity of the trials that everyone on Voyager had endured, and the changes it had wrought in them. If they could not understand, how could Mark? Could anyone other than the other Voyagers ever truly know who Kathryn Janeway had become?
In a way, it was her own fault. After Justin's death, she had intentionally held herself aloof from any Starfleet officers who had shown interest in her in the hopes that the next romance would be with a civilian - someone whom she could depend on to stay safe and sound while she went out into the danger alone. She had found that security, and so much more, with Mark. She could hardly complain now that he didn't know the spacefaring life as she did. She had walked into this relationship with her eyes wide open.
The question was, had he?
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's note: I'd be glad to know what you think!
