Gretchen sighed and looked at her, "I suppose…..I've been debating….I don't want to but….."
Gretchen left the sentence unfinished and stood up and walked, shoulders hunched, with all of the enthusiasm of someone headed to their own execution.
Kathryn followed her through the mostly empty halls, to the holodeck.
"You might want to….prepare yourself," said Gretchen, "I doubt this is what you're expecting."
"I'm ready," said Kathryn, nodding and authorizing the computer to use her credits.
"Computer play Kincaid 20," said Gretchen, straining to get out the words.
A moment later the space filled…..there was hard wood and stained glass….and pews. There were people in them and they were all facing the front with serious expressions. At the front there was a podium, an altar…..and a coffin. She did not need to ask who was in it.
It was covered with a black cloth that carried the Starfleet emblem. Two baskets of very large and odd looking purple hyacinths were displayed on the stairs next to it.
Kathryn scanned the room, determined to take in every detail before she spoke to see what sense she could make of Gretchen's mind.
She looked at the people more closely, they were her crew, but older. She could make out her senior officers, Samantha Wildman, and about 20 others. Notably none of their children were present, despite this clearly being set in Gretchen's time.
Being at my own funeral is eerie….but nowhere near as eerie as knowing my daughter keeps repeating this….torturing herself with it.
She felt Gretchen's gaze on her and moved to sit in one of the pews facing the coffin. Gretchen followed her and sat down.
Her first question was obvious, "This wasn't," said Kathryn gesturing, "This isn't the style of funeral your mother had," she said simply.
"No," said Gretchen, giving a ghost of a smile and settling back in the pew, "It certainly wasn't…the biggest difference being that they would be burying the coffin…..not ejecting it into space…..but at any rate, I never felt….closure from my mother's funeral…..so I've been trying…..different ways."
"Honestly the Starfleet funeral felt….cold to me," said Gretchen, with an edge to her voice, "I've tried Klingon, Irish Catholic, American Protestant…Anything either of us have a cultural tie to…This is my favorite …..probably because I think this church is pretty…..But I still haven't gotten it right….."
"Something's missing….." said Gretchen softly, defeat, even humiliation, in her voice, "I know it's a long shot…..even unfair to bring you here…." She added, fidgeting desperately with her hands, "But I figured you might…..know what it is…..," she continued awkwardly, "You're her, in a sense anyway…..maybe you see what I'm missing….."
Believe me, I wish it were that simple….thought Kathryn, heart aching at the pain in Gretchen's voice, at her own inability to fix it.
"Gretchen….I don't know that anyone ever finds the right words," said Kathryn softly, "Or does the right thing….It's impossible to really sum up a life like that ….. A funeral can help but…..you can't keep repeating them forever…..Frankly now that I see it, I'm not sure what Tuvok was thinking when he suggested you keep relieving her funeral…..whatever strength you can draw from her….it's not here."
"Mary said the right thing, for her father," said Gretchen, shaking her head stubbornly, "I didn't hear her eulogy…..L'Naal gave me a concussion right as the funeral was starting by knocking my chair out from under me…..but Mary came to Sickbay afterwards….and she read it to me. And they were exactly the right words, exactly…somehow she finished Tom's life for him….I…don't have that gift…..I can't complete this story….I don't know why….all these years later…..I can't get over her death….."
Kathryn looked around the room again as silence fell. She was thinking furiously, there was indeed something….something underneath the words and the images that Kathryn sensed suddenly….that she knew, but could not say yet. Just as she worried that she would not be able to uncover it in time, it came to her.
"Gretchen there's not…..there's not anything here that speaks about your mother, as your mother, is there?"
"What?" said Gretchen softly, turning to her.
"There aren't any pictures…or trinkets….or even symbols that I recognize. In the Alpha Quadrant….that's what you would usually see….things to represent not just the person's culture or religion or occupation….but their family."
Gretchen fell quiet for a moment. Kathryn knew for all the death she had seen, she hadn't experienced many funerals. Not for the first time since she had known Gretchen, she felt herself drawing very deeply from the base of who she was.
"When my father died," said Kathryn, voice becoming emotional as she pointed toward the right side of the coffin, "There was a huge picture of my father and I…both of us in our uniforms….from when I started at the Academy….my mother picked it out…..I could barely look at it at the time, it filled me with so much guilt…..I could've saved him and I didn't."
"But looking back on it now," continued Kathryn, warmth joining the pain in her voice, "I feel…..loved when I think about it….I know he'd forgive me for what I did…..I know the love he had for me outweighs my mistake….despite the consequences….or perhaps that we were both victims of a terrible accident that just happened…..but I won't let it take away the years we had together, the love, the devotion…..that's what I think of when I remember that picture of my father, Admiral Edward Janeway."
Gretchen was staring at her, drinking in every word with a sort of shock on her face.
Kathryn continued speaking, not knowing what to say, but feeling she needed to keep talking, "There were a lot of people at my father's funeral that mourned the Admiral, the Starfleet Officer….I did too, that was a vital part of my father…..but I also mourned him as the man who used to hold my hand and take me for walks around my grandparent's farm…..who played me for hours in tennis ….and never even complained about the time, effort, and credits lost when I quit suddenly in a tantrum when I was 12."
Kathryn laughed warmly, and shook her head remembering.
Gretchen was still staring at her with the same shocked expression.
Kathryn continued speaking, "And while I cared about the Starfleet Admiral, my sister Phoebe most definitely didn't, not a whit…..she painted a picture of my father in a gray sweater, pushing her in a swing dangling from an old oak tree….."
She turned to Gretchen and spoke gently, eyes soft, "So you see…..I think that Captain Kathryn Janeway, white hair, 62 years old, has had too many funerals….but I don't think your mother ever had any."
Gretchen looked away.
"You spoke about Tom's funeral….and how his daughter Mary said the right words. Tom had three living biological children, plus you, to mourn him in a similar way, to support each other…but with this funeral…..everyone was mourning a Captain, even Chakotay in a way….you were the only one mourning a mother...that was very isolating, I think."
Gretchen sighed deeply….and seemed to sag.
"Gretchen so much was left undone and unsaid between you. Her death was very sudden, one moment she was there and the next she wasn't. It was also very violent, both in general and to you personally; I imagine you were still in shock at the funeral. Even if it hadn't been monopolized by people who were mourning the Captain, you might not have had the real chance to reflect and come to terms with it. Not to mention you were twelve, and I imagine your thoughts changed as you grew up. She should've been there for all of those phases, but she wasn't."
Gretchen was looking down, and Kathryn could hear her sniffling, and see tears run down her face.
She continued softly, "Chakotay suggested things weren't very good between you when she died….and everything you've ever said about her reflects the same thing…some part of you needs, desperately, to get the chance to say all those things you've been holding back….."
"It might not have been so bad," said Gretchen's stubborn voice, still looking down, and running her hand across her nose, "If she hadn't insisted that she be shot out there in the darkness…..where I couldn't ever talk to her again."
"That's a…..Starfleet tradition," said Kathryn softly.
"Oh, boo hoo a Starfleet tradition," said Gretchen obnoxiously.
Careful…..you're not talking to a Starfleet Lieutenant…you're talking to a young girl who's mother just died…..who abandoned her….
Kathryn flinched internally.
That's what she feels like, doesn't she? That her mother abandoned her?
"Gretchen," said Kathryn, very gently, "I'm sure she didn't think about you when she made those plans….."
Gretchen looked up at her, and glared, very tiredly, "You think it makes it better that she wasn't thinking of me?"
"No," said Kathryn, flinching again, "I don't."
Gretchen stood up suddenly, and paced in front of the coffin. She spoke hurriedly and erratically, voice growing in bitterness, "She wasn't religious, not Vulcan or something where what has to be done at a funeral, has to be done…..it didn't matter…..and she still couldn't think of me…just her body…..just a cold hard shell…..and she'd still rather be thrown out the airlock like garbage because it's the Starfleet way…..than do something for me….."
"I imagine she didn't know it would bother you," said Kathryn desperately, eyes wide and distressed, "There's no way she could've known that."
"I told daddy it did," said Gretchen, turning to her, face like stone, "And he didn't care. He didn't care because he knew she wouldn't. He said it was the last thing we could do for her. What I wanted never mattered…..it never mattered to her…it was always some love affair between her and Starfleet."
Gretchen paused, breathing in and out, in and out, clenching her fists and seeming to try very hard to control her temper.
"She was wrong," said Kathryn, raising up, "She was wrong to pay so little attention to what you wanted…..it wasn't your fault Gretchen….."
"I remember the exact moment that I started to wonder if it was her, rather than me," said Gretchen, staring forward, voice strained, "I was 14 and studying at B'Elanna's, trying desperately to do better on the Engineering 2 exam, and Mary was so amused remembering how she had failed that class. And B'Elanna came in and they started laughing about it together."
Gretchen gulped, fighting to get through the story, "I just stared at them from my seat, wide-eyed, going back and forth in disbelief. B'Elanna, the Head Engineer, laughing at her daughter failing Engineering. And it wasn't temporary, Mary never took another Engineering class, and B'Elanna didn't care."
Gretchen turned her head from Kathryn, staring down the long aisle at the door, "It wasn't…..it was so different from something you would've said…..it wasn't a moment we never could've had I…I just wandered out of there…and I guess…I guess if you'd had a grave I would've gone to speak to it….but there wasn't one….so I just went and stared at the window in our quarters….out there at the void you were somewhere in….floating…and wondered why you had to be somewhere that I couldn't reach….but realizing then, that you probably preferred to be somewhere I couldn't find you," Gretchen's voice broke on the last words, and she turned her head as far away as it would go without moving her body.
"That's not true," said Kathryn, paralyzed for a moment by the weight of the story, the depth of her failure, and her daughter's pain.
"It is true," said Gretchen with pure conviction in her voice, turning now and staring Kathryn in the eyes.
She paused for a brief moment, and closed her eyes as her voice became harsh, "When she was still alive I kept thinking I could be what she wanted if I did what she said…..but looking back on it now I know that she felt she had lost in the child lottery, pulled a Joker when she needed an Ace."
Kathryn breathed out painfully, "Gretchen….I….."
"Don't tell me it's not true," said the younger woman heatedly, eyes on fire, "When I know it was."