Disclaimer: They are not mine.

Chapter Rating: T

Note: Thank you, Cheshire, once again, for wading through this and helping me make sense. If anyone is able to follow most of this, it's probably thanks to her efforts ;)

Chapter Twenty-One

Part I

"I'm so proud of you."

Those were the words that tugged at her consciousness, crashing the sense of peace and security in one fell swoop. The freeing illusion of being back on Earth, secure in her father's arms, lost some of its magic as the price for this incredible gift fully dawned upon her. She'd been celebrating defeat, and realizing this, Kathryn stiffened in his embrace.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" she murmured into the warm chest against which she had pressed her face. "I died on that base."

Edward pulled back from her, loosening his hold just enough to lean back and see her face. He wasted no words on softening his response. "Yes." To her intense relief, he did not release her entirely. She never wanted him to let her go again, and she kept her hands fisted in the back of his shirt even as she tilted her chin up to meet his eyes.

Kathryn pondered what his answer meant for those she'd left behind. A dull glaze settled over the film of tears still coating her eyes. Her throat went dry, and her gaze dropped away from his. "Then I failed," she whispered. "I couldn't open the rift."

He was smiling gently, bringing a single hand up to smooth over the tousled hair on the top of her head. His other arm still wrapped around her firmly. "No one wins them all, Goldenbird. Not even you."

Her throat burned as tears threatened to well up anew at the sound of his voice…his voice…calling her by the term of endearment she'd once lived to hear. The captain's eyes closed in tormented bliss. She'd craved this…oh, how she had craved this…

But she didn't deserve it. "I'm sorry." Her face burrowed into the material of his jacket again, and she closed her eyes in an effort to stem the flow of tears. Her efforts were largely futile; the tears came anyway. "I'm sorry I couldn't hold on."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I…wanted you to be proud of me."

The hand stroking her hair stilled. "I thought we settled this, Kathryn." Then, she felt his strong fingers sliding down to firmly cup her chin, and Edward tilted his daughter's face up to him, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I've always been proud of you. More than I ever thought possible."

Again, the inward battle raged. She basked in his approval yet simultaneously rejected it. With every ounce of strength she had within her, Kathryn pushed free from the haven of his arms and turned away.

The forest was cooler now – only by a few degrees, but enough to make her almost chilly. The sky had darkened over the thick canopy of leaves, and the breeze picked up strength. She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself and miserably admitted, "I'm not so sure you should be – proud of me, that is."

"And why is that, Kathryn?" He didn't try to follow her or make any move to draw her back to him but spoke quietly to her from his place at the edge of the clearing. "Why shouldn't I be proud of my amazing little girl?"

Oh, so many reasons…where did she begin? Telling her father all the ways in which she'd likely disappointed him was hard: as hard as giving the order to send a member of her crew into imminent danger. She'd lived much of her childhood in fear of the first, and the bulk of her adulthood avoiding the second. But it never occurred to her to withhold her answer. She wouldn't hide the truth from him, even if it cost her the sweet balm of his approval. He'd taught her better than that.

"I didn't get them home," she admitted, still feeling the chill through the added buffer of her own arms crossed over her chest. "I didn't protect them." Vague memories of a dark and dingy room sparked within her consciousness. "I tried, but I…"

And then the images grew, sprung to life around her, around them both, and the forest was no more. Instead, they were standing in the living tableau of her memory. Visions of meeting Benzas for the first time grew in size until it was as though Kathryn and her father were standing on the smoking, devastated deck of the Oncaveat ship. Piles of corpses, some no more than children, surrounded them. Desecrated, defiled and lifeless. The screams of those still being tormented rang in the thick, acrid air. Both Janeways watched on in silence. They saw her hands, through the eyes of her own memory, pulling a hideous Jehnz-yin soldier off of one screaming woman. Felling another soldier as he bent over a fallen man with his knife raised high above him…

Chakotay's face in the ready room as the memory Kathryn's voice filled the air, sounding determined and resolute. "We have to help them. We're in this now. I won't just stand by and watch these people continue to suffer." Chakotay's subsequent argument was half-hearted at best. The approval in his dark, trusting eyes clear could be seen despite the attention to duty he fulfilled in pointing out that she would be violating the Prime Directive.

The scenes of her memory continued to flash around them, changing from one location to another without warning. The summit and her decision then. Hedri's voice telepathically resonating in their minds. Welcoming and instructing. Cautioning and thanking. Encouraging…

Back on the ship, making her way down the deck with purposeful strides. "I'm going to try and divert their attention from Voyager. I'm taking the Flyer, and I'll draw what fire I can. Use the distraction to get the ship to safety."

The red alert klaxons blaring, blinking red patterns across his sorrowful face as he struggled to keep up with her while walking sideways to face her. "This isn't necessary. There's no guarantee they'll go after a shuttle. It's Voyager they want."

"Maybe." Another lie of omission. Another compromise of her morals. Truth, usually held sacred between them, deliberately sacrificed to serve the ship. "But we're running out of options, and you know it. I have to try."

"Why does it have to be you? You're needed here. Let Tom take the shuttle. He's the better pilot…"

"Exactly. That's why we need him here. This decision is mine to make, and I've made it. Tuvok agrees with me." Not looking at him. Not able to look him directly in the eyes. "I have to go. I have to speak with Benzas before I leave, and you're needed on the bridge. Take care of my ship, Commander."

The turbolift doors closing on the sight of his confused, hurt face…

And then they were in the prison cell. Harry crouched before them in chains, battered and alone. Eyes hollow, his face accusing, tormented as he stared back at them/her. Neelix hanging limply from his bonds. Blood, filth, unimaginable suffering. The stench of rotting flesh. Evil.

Rage, a red mist. She saw images of a hand out in front of her, holding a phaser…her hand…her phaser. Felling soldier after soldier. Taking ruthless aim and pressing down on the trigger button again and again. No remorse. No hesitation. Only satisfaction and purpose.

Taunting. Humiliation. Tongues burning, slithering along her exposed flesh. Fear. Disgust. Claws digging, scratching, invading. Fear. Hatred. Pain, again and again. Despair. Giving up.

The tightness in Edward's voice was audible. "You did what you felt you had to do," he managed.

"Does that make it right?"

No answer. None was needed.

That was it. The playback of memory faded, and the forest reappeared around them. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, her head bowed against the hearty wind.

"Do you know why you're here with me now, Kathryn?"

Her head lifted, her eyes widening in confusion. "I died."

"Yes, but that isn't what I mean. In the end, the choice was ultimately yours."

She finally turned back to him, believing that she understood. "Yes. I decided to take the shuttle. And when Neelix and Harry were captured, I decided to–"

"No, Kathryn. That's still not what I mean."

The air shimmered, and the transparent figure of Garan Xi looming over her smaller figure on the dirty Jehnz-yin floor appeared between father and daughter. Kathryn forced herself to watch and not think about the difficulty her father had watching this also as the general was pulled from her, and then Benzas was holding her. And Chakotay's voice was calling her, telling her to hang on…begging her to do so.

It hurt to watch. And the pain in Chakotay's tortured voice…in both men's voices…cut into her like one of Xi's knives, sharp and unforgiving. She had done that to them. Her choices had caused the open anguish in the scene before her. Necessary? Kathryn had thought so. She watched through the impartial eyes of the onlooker – her father this time, she supposed – as the representative of her made the choice to succumb to the temptation of non-being.

And Kathryn realized that she'd given up…perhaps before that moment, if she was truly honest with herself. She lifted her eyes to the steel blue-grey orbs across from her and read nothing but compassion there even as self hatred overwhelmed her. "I gave up," she spat. Disgusted at the conscious admission that was wrung from her under the truth serum of her father's steady gaze.

"Why?" The question was soft, devoid of accusation. Admiral Janeway knew very well that his reproach wasn't warranted: Kathryn had always been harder on herself than he could ever have been. Edward had spent long stretches of the beginning of eternity contemplating whether or not it was his fault that his daughter was so uncompromisingly harsh in her self-assessment sometimes. Others had eventually helped him see that it no longer mattered, because nothing could be changed now, and it wasn't meant to be. It simply was. So, in patient silence, he awaited her answer to his question.

"The pain was too much." Kathryn's face was streaked with bitter tears, her nose sniffling and eyes red-rimmed and irritated as she stared at the ground. "I thought I could handle it. I thought I could handle anything – would handle anything to safeguard them, but…" She lifted her eyes back to her father's face, seeking something she wasn't sure he could give her at the final admission of the result of her decisions.

"But?" he prompted softly. Compassionately, and yet somehow unmercifully.

This, she thought with an odd sense of satisfaction. This was the father she knew. Trusted. She recalled saying to the vicious alien who had impersonated Edward that her father had never shielded her from life, and therefore, she didn't believe that he would ever try to shield her from death…

And indeed, it seemed he wouldn't.

"But what, Kathryn?"

She swallowed thickly. "But the cost was too great. Greater than I imagined. I gave up. I couldn't…no." She shivered as the air grew colder. Icier. "I didn't want to hold on anymore." Her heart felt like cold stone freezing within her chest. The tears had dried. Only a hollow sense of emptiness remained. "I didn't want to…" The horror and the shame of that knowledge was her undoing. She sank to her knees in the moist peat beneath her as Edward finally moved forward and sat beside her. "I didn't want to endure another second of the hell I went through in that room. In that quadrant…"

He watched her hands move listlessly about, as though seeking something, and he was certain she was unaware that they were doing so.

"I didn't want…it was hard," she admitted. Her voice shook as her breath came in great, heaping gulps. "It was so hard, Daddy. I tried to do everything, to be everything you and Starfleet wanted me to be. I tried to uphold the Prime Directive, to do what was right, no matter what the odds against us in doing so. I tried to maintain my distance from my crew, to give them a pristine example they could learn from, be proud of. I tried to be what everyone needed me to be. I tried to be leader, mother, friend, daughter...all the while damned well aware that I could never cross the line between captain and whatever role it was that I was expected to play."

"That's the burden of command, Kathryn," he reminded her – sternly, to her biased ears. "You knew all of this about the job before you took it."

Her eyes blazed with a sudden fire as she focused fully on him at last. "Yes – I did. But no one has ever been completely cut off from contact from Starfleet headquarters like we were."

Edward recognized the resentment boiling over just in time to sit back on his heels before the explosion…

"I had no backup, no support! No one to turn to for help to feed my starving crew when my principles forced me to ignore less ethical, but almost certain means of doing so. There were no orders to fall back on, no precedents to follow…no reinforcements when our enemies came at us in droves…it was hard, damn it! Just what the hell did you all expect me to do out there?"

The questions were as obviously rhetorical as they were frustration induced. Edward noticed that her lower lip was trembling after her outburst, and she seemed surprised at herself for having erupted so strongly. Kathryn probably hadn't realized the depth of her own resentment, he realized. She did now, though. Another tiny sob was wrenched from her, even as he watched her fight it with every ounce of her being. Again, he drew her into his embrace, wrapping his arms around her as she rocked slightly back and forth against him. "Let it out, Kathryn. You don't have to be the captain here, you know."

Another sob escaped. He'd hit the nail on the head with great accuracy, and they both knew it. "It was killing me," she admitted. "I tried so hard to hold to my principles, to make you and Starfleet proud. I tried to maintain my distance. But it was so hard…"

"You made it harder on yourself, as usual. They were there, Kathryn. They were there for you all along."

He held her, comforting her even as he spared her no truths, no matter how harsh they seemed now. "Protocol isn't something by which you can guide every aspect of your life. It wasn't ever meant to be. And it wasn't principle you were upholding when you kept them all at such an arms length. It was…"

"Fear," she admitted, finishing the statement for him. "I was afraid I'd lose them. Lose them all if I cared for them. If I really let them in…I didn't think that I could face it if I lost one of them after letting myself care for them like that. I was afraid that I'd collapse like I did after…" she trailed off, tensing, as though afraid to open a new floodgate.

Edward did it for her. "After Justin and I left you," he prodded gently.

It was too much – all of it. The losses, the agonies. The silent breaking over the years and then the acknowledgement of a hurt that had never fully healed stripped her of speech entirely. For long moments, she only wept uncontrollably into his shirt again, dimly aware that his uniform jacket and even the shirt underneath it were both soaked in her grief.

"Shh," he repeated, over and over, holding her as his own tears flowed freely. "Shh. I'm here now."

"How could I have done it? How could I have left them?" she was asking after a moment. Edward stilled at the question. "How could I have given up on them…abandoned them when I…"

"When you know what that feels like? Knew how much your crew loved you, even though you repeatedly told yourself they only respected you as a leader?" Her answer was another round of muffled sobs. "I know, Kathryn. Let it out," Edward soothed her, still holding on to his beloved little girl.

She needed to get this out – as much as he needed to be here for her as he hadn't been able to be for far too many years, many of those years in which he'd been alive. They both needed for him to hold her while she exorcised the many demons that had haunted her for so long.

"How could I have let them go so easily?" He didn't answer her but merely listened to her erratic, hiccupping breathing and allowed her to vent the years of pent-up pain in his arms. "They never gave up on me, you know," she was telling him. "There were times when I couldn't even recognize myself in the woman doing the things I've done under the justification of getting them home. There were times when I'd given up on myself, and yet they never…" She trailed off and finally gave in to pure grief.

And for a seeming eternity, they sat there like that, with her huddled against him and him cradling her like he had when she was a child.

After a time, he became aware of a familiar presence. Edward went still as he glanced up into the forest, detecting the approaching figure long before he heard the strong voice echoing throughout the forest glade…

"The question you should be asking, Kathryn, is not why you have come," a thunderous, unknown voice filled the entire canopy, startling her out of her miserable daze. "The question you should be asking is what you're going to do about it now."

Part II

"What are you doing?"

Chakotay didn't respond, for he heard nothing of the words spoken to him, felt none of the searching grip closing over his left arm. He gathered up the limp, lifeless form that was all that was left of the woman who had claimed ownership of his heart…his soul…for nearly the last five years.

The heart and the soul which were gone now. She'd taken it with her into death, and the bleak desolation she'd left behind was astonishing. Staggering. As the icy, bitter knowledge of the loss permeated his consciousness, the denial receded, and Chakotay knew pain in ways he hadn't ever imagined he could know it.

And he'd imagined – had felt – quite a bit of pain in his lifetime. He'd thought he could handle this. Had told himself that if the time came for him to lift Kathryn Janeway's lifeless body into his arms to take back to her ship, to face their people with his ultimate failure to safeguard her, he would be able to work through it, in the end. For her. For the ship.

But he saw now how arrogant, how unbelievably deluded that had been of him. He saw, too late…

He saw nothing but her, could discern not a single nuance of his living companions, even though they were scarcely centimeters away from him right now. Only she filled his vision. The commander had already memorized every bruise on her pallid skin, every laceration and bite mark marring it. He would have them removed, he decided grimly. Distantly. He would have every remnant of what she'd endured in this room erased from her body before they…

He wasn't a soft man. He didn't cry at the drop of a hat or even at the tougher losses, but tears were streaming, unchecked down his face, scalding him. Burning – it was the only thing he could feel.

Until he became cognizant, quite accidentally, of a hand gripping his arm, halting his determined progress out of this alien hell. His eyes flashed. With what, he couldn't guess. There was nothing in him anymore. But the threat to his retrieval of Kathryn's body had definitely captured his attention.

"What are you doing?" Benzas was demanding urgently, daring to look the human in the face as he posed his ridiculous question.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" On the surface, Chakotay's voice was emotionless, but it held the undercurrent of a subtle threat. "I'm taking her back to the ship. I doubt…" he paused, forcing himself to keep his last, pathetic hopes at bay lest it destroy even his ability to function physically when the foolish hope was inevitably destroyed. "I doubt our doctor can do anything for her, but he has brought people back before. There might…" He stopped, ready to move again, catching control of himself just barely. "I'm taking her back to the ship," he finished firmly.

"No. You'll never make it. She'll never make it."

Chakotay didn't even spare another thought for the man. He turned to the door and began walking, shifting his precious bundle ever so gently to get a better grip on her as he moved. It was beyond belief to him when the senator swung around into his path, again obstructing the commander from achieving his goal.

"Listen to me, Commander. You have to put her back down."

The hell he would. "No." It was absurd. He'd release Kathryn…Kathryn's body…to no one save the chief medical officer of Voyager. "I'm taking her out of here." The words "too late" fell silently as though he'd spoken them aloud.

But Benzas was insistent. He did not move from Chakotay's path, even as his eyes glazed over and he withdrew into some hidden inner world the human couldn't begin to fathom…and didn't care to.

Until now, she had been quiet, lost in her own musings, but at the sound of spoken voices, Shasta Accor glanced to Benzas, the source of her good fortune all those years ago. He was standing between the human male and the door…and she started upon noting for the first time that he was glowing. Glowing. Every muscle in her body tensed with muted joy. She knew that glow. It was the unmistakable indication that he was in the initial stages of facilitation.

A rift. A rift was opening…here. Now. Without Janeway.

Of course it was. Being linked with Benzas, Shasta now possessed his knowledge. She gradually became aware of Hedri, who had been on the fringes of the senator's consciousness this whole time. Shasta's remorse at having been too late to save Kathryn and her abject terror at meeting Garan Xi once again had kept the Oncaveat senator from properly acknowledging the presence of the Unani representative.

But now she was aware. This was no freak accident: it had been the plan all along. The Unani had reached the centennial apex of their power. There was enough of it to open two rifts, and Janeway had been planning to open this one.

A thrill surged through Shasta. Here. At the most powerful base of the hated Jehnz-yin military. Osalik, their pride and joy – the center of their ship-building efforts. Tens of thousands of soldiers lived on this moon. It was from this location, more than any other, that the hideous attacks on her people were hatched, organized, and set into motion. It was the perfect choice. She vaguely wondered why her people had not thought of it before, but then…the Oncaveat had not been meant for war. They certainly hadn't bred for it, as the Jehnz-yi had…

Janeway had trained for it, Shasta realized, as Benzas's and Hedri's intimate knowledge of the deceased alien leader swirled through her awareness. Janeway's people loved peace, above all else, but they had recognized the need for preparedness as they ventured out into the vast galaxy on a noble quest for scientific knowledge. Janeway had analyzed the Oncaveat situation, as she had been trained to do, and she had arrived at the answer to their problems. And she had been willing to sacrifice herself to see the plan carried out.

But it was a rift that wouldn't open all the way. It was one that would kill the facilitator as she was caught up in the center of the physically altered space. She, and now, in this case, he. Benzas. Benzas would make the sacrifice now.

Only in this instance and under these specific circumstances could the rift still be possible after the facilitator's death. If they hadn't chosen a facilitator who needed a bondmate to support her link with Hedri, opening this rift would no longer be an option after Janeway's death, but they had chosen a human. It was still possible.

They hadn't failed…yet.

They'd only failed Janeway. Janeway's people. They'd only cost them their most valued asset: their leader.

I cannot, Benzas. Please don't ask it of me! Hedri sounded distinctly agitated, drawing Shasta's attention to the internal dialogue between Benzas and the Unani female.

You can. You must! Or I will break the link – I swear it on all that I am!

What you are asking is no simple matter, as it was with Shasta. Healing is one thing. Bringing back one who has crossed over is another thing, altogether!

But you can do it? The demand resonated fiercely through Accor's mind as Benzas pressed his case. It is possible?

Shasta could only sit in stunned silence. What her old, dear friend was suggesting was radical. It had never been done – at least not to this extent. But if it could be done…

Not without cost, Benzas! Not without great cost to your efforts. Your people…our children….have waited so long for this moment. They have waited so long for the peace you were meant to live in. You cannot throw away this remarkable opportunity for the sake of one woman! Kathryn knew the risks. She accepted them. She would not want this!

She couldn't believe she was going to say this. Shasta could not believe the words that were going to come out of her mind… But can it be done, Hedri? Is it possible?

There was a moment's pause.

In theory, yes. With her cooperation. And it will require a sacrifice I do not believe your people can afford to make, Shasta. I urge you to consider the risks involved. Need I remind you of the oath you both swore to protect your people above all else?

Shasta had moved to stand at Benzas's side, obstructing Chakotay's path with her own body, also, without realizing it. But it can be done?

Another pause, this one decidedly stony, before: yes. In theory, it can be done.

Shasta's eyes met Benzas's. She nodded her agreement with his plan. Then do it. Save her. To Chakotay, she said aloud, "If you want her to live, Commander, we have no more time. We believe we can save her, but you must set her down. Quickly, before we lose everything."

Anyone who is still with me by this point...I commend you :P. And to everyone who has taken the time to leave a comment or review: thank you. It means a great deal whenever someone takes the time to let me know what they think. Your collective kindness has been greatly appreciated.

Return to Top