We Can Only Go On

CW: Discussion of difficult topics related to past chapters (grief, pregnancy loss, mental illness, sexual encounters, marital discord, death)


When the turbolift doors slid open on deck three, I startled slightly at the sight of someone else standing in front of me. "Captain Janeway," I said, snapping to a posture of attention.

She smiled teasingly. "At ease, Talia, before you sprain something."

Relaxing my stance, I shook my head and laughed at myself. "Reflex," I explained as I stepped out of the turbolift. "I should have anticipated running into you, but my mind was elsewhere."

With a look of compassion, the captain placed a hand on my shoulder. "I understand. All personal items have been moved back to your quarters from sickbay, and I have just dropped off the storage unit you asked for."

"Thank you," I said. "Think he'll open it before I get there?"

She shook her head. "No. He's waiting for you."

"Well, then," I said, "I suppose I should get back."

Janeway brought her other hand up to my shoulder, and gave both a supportive squeeze. Then, she wrapped her arms around me, drawing me into a tight embrace. "It's good to have you back, Talia," she murmured.

I didn't know what to say, so I simply hugged her and let the moment linger for as long as it needed to.


The first moments after I entered my quarters were thick with tension. For a while we simply stared at each other — Harry and I — unsure of how to begin.

Finally, Harry cleared his throat. "I put all of our stuff away."

"Good. Thank you."

Another awkward silence.

"What is this?" Harry asked, pointing at the storage container the captain had left for me.

"It's my duranja," I informed him. "It's for Annika... and for Rojel."

A strong gust of air burst from his lips. "That's the first time I've heard you say his name since we lost him."

I wrapped my arms around my waist. "I know."

As he stared at me, a brief flicker of hope gave way to confusion and agony. He pursed his lips, swallowed whatever it was that his impulses wanted him to say, and nodded.

"You're angry, aren't you?"

"It's not your fault," came his reflexive reply.

"I know," I said, and for once I actually meant it.

Schmullis was right; I had to forgive myself for things I did in response to circumstances beyond my control. It was the only way to heal from the heartbreak I felt inside of myself, and it was only from a place of healing that I could begin to reconnect with others.

Still, it did not change the fact that I had hurt Harry. "We both know that I was sick," I told him. "Not guilty by reason of insanity. It doesn't change how we feel. It doesn't invalidate my feelings of guilt, or your feelings of anger. And acting like it does only represses the feelings."

Harry crossed his arms. "You planning to be our marriage therapist now?"

I shook my head. "No, of course not —"

"Because I feel like that might be a conflict of interests."

"Harry." I sighed, then quickly looked away as tears sprung into my eyes. Grabbing at the shirt fabric gathered around my waist, I tightened my own embrace.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"We have to find a way to talk about this, Harry. I need to know what honestly upsets you, whether you think it's valid or not. Otherwise, we'll never work through it. Otherwise, we'll never be able to talk to each other about anything that matters, and we'll lose all that we have together."

"Do you still want this?"

The question came without warning, and was delivered with such calm that he could have just as easily been asking what Neelix had on the menu that day. I blinked, and licked my lips. "Yes, I do."

"Because, lately, it's seemed like you don't want me anymore."

"I do, Harry," I insisted. When the skeptical look on his face remained unchanged, I knew that I needed to find another way to tell him. "Aka'no ja'ahkaya per ja'ital. Abrem non'shu."

His expression softened, but he still wasn't convinced.

"The truth, Harry, is this: I didn't expect to come back. When I woke up in sickbay, I couldn't process it. I had grieved for Rojel, for you, and for Voyager already... for five months. And, I let you go. I thought I was going to die. I was ready to die — I wanted to. When Tom broke down, it was because he knew, and he couldn't stand another loss. I only intended to find comfort for us both. I didn't mean... to fall in love. But I did.

"Then came the message from Voyager. Suddenly everything I thought... it wasn't true. I couldn't make my reality match yours. Even the way I experienced time was discordant. My universe didn't make sense to me anymore. I had been ready to die and be released from it all. But then I was here, and I had to find a way to live with it. Except, I couldn't. It was too much. Everything felt wrong, like I didn't belong here anymore. Like I wasn't your Talia anymore." I hung my head. "If that makes any sense at all."

"Believe it or not, I think I actually know what you mean."

Looking up, I quietly asked, "Really?"

Harry nodded. "It's how I felt after the divergence field, after the Vidiians attacked my Voyager and the captain ordered me to leave them all behind to come here."

I hung my head, a shaky sigh escaping my lips. Closing my eyes, I felt hot tears spilling onto my face. "I'm so sorry for everything. For not being what you needed. For what I've done... for how I treated you —"

"Talia, you didn't —"

"How can I forgive myself for the night you came home to fix things with me, and I... I treated you so... so horribly..."

Somewhere along the way, while I was in treatment, I had set aside that memory and nearly forgotten it. Now, it resurfaced with a vengeance. I had used him. He came to make things right with me, and I jumped him. I called him Tom — had seen him as Tom through the lense of my psychosis — and I used him for sex. And he let me, because I asked him to. I sobbed as the memory replayed in my head.

I had no right to claim that I loved either one of them.

Still, Harry wrapped his arms tight around me, rocked me slowly, and murmured soft words into my ear. It took me a while to realize that he was repeating a desperate plea — "Stay with me, ja'Talia. Please, stay with me." His whole body was trembling, for he held onto me as if his strength alone could keep me from breaking apart again under the weight of my own guilt.

Suddenly, I realized that it wasn't just my guilt carving the canyon in between us, and that the anger I had sensed from him pointed to something deeper.

"You think you failed me," I said aloud as soon as the realization struck me. Harry's motion stopped, and his grip loosened around me so we could look each other in the face. "You feel responsible for this somehow."

"I promised to take care of you above all others," he answered, cupping his hand around my face. "To give all of myself to love you and make you happy. But I couldn't save you, and I couldn't save Rojel."

I shook my head. "Harry —"

"I know," he insisted. "None of that was in my control. But when I did get you back —"

Harry's voice cut off with a sob. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he forced the sudden rush of tears to run directly down his cheeks. "I never knew a person could be so broken," he whispered. "I didn't know what to do. All I wanted was to make you happy, but I couldn't even do that anymore. I failed you in every way, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Framing his face in my hands, I used my thumbs to wipe the tears from his cheeks. "Harry," I said firmly. "Harry, listen to me. Look at me."

Obediently, he opened his swollen eyes.

"For one thing, that night —"

"I know," he insisted. "You were sick."

"That doesn't change how I hurt you. It doesn't change the fact that, no matter who I thought you were, I became the soulless piece of dirt my mind had been telling me I was since the first time Tom took me to Rojel's grave. After spending my whole life trying so hard to be the good, noble person my parents wanted me to be — even if they couldn't agree on what that was supposed to look like — I became as foul as every enemy I've fought against."

"Or," Harry countered, "maybe you needed some feel-good chemicals in your brain."

His assertion stopped me in my tracks, and I hung my head. "Isn't that supposed to be one of my lines?"

"It would be, if you were talking about anyone but yourself."

I sighed, defeated. He had a point.

"You need to forgive yourself," Harry said as he gently lifted my chin so he could look into my eyes once again. "You've apologized, and I forgive you. It's past now. Time to move on."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"How do you feel about that night, honestly?"

"It wasn't a strong moment for either one of us," he said. "I just wanted what I've always wanted — to make you happy."

I shook my head. "That's the other thing, Harry. You are not responsible for ensuring my happiness. Do you understand me?"

His face scrunched with confusion. "What?"

"My happiness is not your job. You already pile enough stress onto yourself without also worrying over something that will come and go in me no matter what. I know you want to be everyone's hero. But, what is the cost? What about your happiness?" I paused momentarily, and lowered my register. "What good are things like pleasure and happiness if they're not shared with others?"

Harry smiled through his drying tears. "Where did you get that one from?"

"Annika."

For a few seconds, we both honored her memory with silence.

Gently, I guided his forehead down to rest against mine. "I know that I'm hard to love sometimes, but you cannot expect yourself to fix my depression, or any other condition that piles on top of it. If you do, you'll only blame yourself for something that isn't anyone's fault. You're right to say that I'm too hard on myself, but so are you. And this guilt... it's eating us both alive."

"Then what can I do to help you?"

"Just don't give up on me. I don't want to be alone."

Tilting his chin forward, Harry whispered against my lips, "Never, ja'lat," before taking my mouth with his.


Somewhere within the darkness of my unconscious mind, a familiar voice called my attention to her.

"Talia."

"Alixia?"

"Yes."

I tried to open my eyes, but I could not connect with my body. Fear sliced through me, so visceral it almost seemed like physical pain. Was I getting sick again?

"You are not relapsing into illness," Alixia reassured me. "I am quite real. The impetus for your psychotic condition has been neutralized."

The fear dimmed to unease. "Oh."

"The final task has begun. It is time for you to learn the reason why Voyager has been brought to this distant region. I will show you what you need to know, but I cannot reveal everything to you at once; it would overwhelm you. You must not act upon, share, or make any record of what I reveal until I tell you the time is right. Otherwise, all we have set into motion could be lost. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said. "When do we begin?"

In the distance, I could hear chaos— billions of voices speaking, shouting, writhing against one another. It had been a long time since they had lived within me, but it was the most familiar sense in the world.

What was not familiar, however, was the cold touch of a hand tenderly caressing my chin.

"Seven of Nine," called a dangerous and seductive female voice, "Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One."

I snapped my eyes open. Standing directly in front of me was a woman, shorter than me and more petite in build. Her face was in tact. Rather than being built into one of her eye sockets the way most drones were, this woman's cranial implants appeared to have been drilled into the top of her skull like a twisted, sadistic crown.

The woman's lips curled into a predatory smile. "Good morning. Did you have pleasant dreams?"


End Note: "Aka'no ja'ahkaya per ja'ital. Abrem non'shu.": You are my love and my light. May this be so, for always.

Author Note: Thank you all so very much for reading this! It's a lot, I know, but now we're 2/3 of the way through this epic story together.

It may be a while before you start to see part three getting posted. For one thing, grad school is getting intense as hell. Also, I'll be writing the final story in chunks (rather than one chapter after another) as I pull all of these plot threads together.

In the meantime, come find me on tumblr (carlynroth) and look up the series tag (#far from their bones) for all kinds of extras. And let me know any thoughts, theories, or questions you have about the series.

Thanks!