A Line I Crossed (Part 4)
Another Voyager fanfic by TaTTooGaL™ (Lt Taya 17 Janeway)
And when I chose to live
There was no joy; it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found
******
Captain Kathryn Janeway sat curled in a ball on the couch of her quarters, gazing out at the starscape. The Voyager was moving at slow warp now, in tandem with the Enterprise. They had cleared the treacherous plasma soup and were now back on course for Earth. On the table beside her, her cup of coffee grew cold as she thought about those days before Justin and her father had died. It was still a painful memory, despite the distance of the years between there and now.
And the child…
The doorchime sounded, breaking her chain of thought. She sat up and dried her tears, embarrassed. "Come," she whispered, her voice thick.
It was Chakotay. "Is there something wrong, Commander?"
He sat down beside her on the couch and faced her, the concern visible on his face. " You're upset."
She smiled humorlessly at him. "It's that obvious, huh."
"Would you like to talk about it?"
She gazed at him, searching his frank, honest expression. Should she tell him what had happened all those years ago? "It's alright if you don't want to tell me," he told her gently. "I'll understand."
She shook her head slightly, deciding that she had to get it off her back somehow. "It's about the girl… my daughter." She paused, thinking how to put it to Chakotay. "What she said about her not existing… she was wrong. The day before we were scheduled to launch the prototype, a medical checkup revealed that I was pregnant." Taking a deep breath, she continued. "When I told Justin, he wanted to cancel the test flight altogether, maintaining that I shouldn't be out there. But… I was adamant. They'd prepared months ahead for this flight, and I said I wasn't going to let a small thing ruin their plans. And because of my insistence the flight went on as scheduled… and crashed." Trembling, she gripped the edge of the couch as hard as she could. "I lost my father, my husband-to-be… and I lost my child."
Chakotay put one arm around her as she felt the tears begin to form. "In the months that followed I grieved for my father and for Justin… for the life we never had… but I never mourned the child. Her death was overshadowed by the other two; I never gave it much thought. But now…" She gazed helplessly upwards. "After seeing this young woman and how she's touched the life of others, I suddenly realized how much I'd lost that day. Because of my stubbornness she never even had a fighting chance at life. All that potential… lost. I never got the chance to see her grow up, to share everything that makes a mother and daughter mean so much to each other."
"It's not your fault…"
She ignored him and continued talking. "The last night we were together, Justin and I were talking about our future, and we decided that if the baby was a girl, we'd call her… Amanda." At this point her voice broke, and she buried her face in her hands, trying to stem the flow of tears, both hurt and angry at the same time.
Chakotay hugged her tightly as she shook, speaking in a firm, low voice. "Don't second-guess yourself, Kathryn. You couldn't have known what was to happen. The situation was out of your control. Regret's not going to help; it's already over. You've left it all behind, years and years ago."
She broke from his embrace, red-rimmed eyes flashing in anger. "That's what makes me sick, Chakotay! So much has been taken away from me, and it's too late to do anything about it!" She gritted her teeth. "Damn this universe," she whispered. "Damn it all."
"There are good times and bad times," he told her.
Her voice softened, regaining some of that firmness he knew so well. "I guess you have a point, Chakotay… but sometimes just thinking of the possibilities unturned makes me feel…" she searched for a word to describe what she felt, but couldn't come up with one suitable enough- "like I've missed something wonderful."
Chakotay thought awhile. "You know, you may be wrong about it being too late to do anything. Maybe your daughter died before being born in this universe, but she still exists someplace else…"
She glanced up at him. "On the Enterprise…"
He nodded. "She's still there, and she still misses her mother. You probably haven't noticed it too much, but she's hurt by your refusal to even acknowledge her." He angled his head to look her in the eye. "Maybe you should try talking to her."
Her brow creased, apprehensive. "I'm not sure if that's a good idea."
"Look at it this way: what have you got to lose?" he prodded her.
She thought it over for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about."
******
And sometimes I think
My father, too, was a refugee
I know they tried to keep their pain from me
They could not see what it was for
******
The first few weeks following her mother's death, she'd lit a candle in her room everyday, adding a new one daily to those half-melted ones already in her room. Each candle was a balm, soothing and calming her soul, reminding her that there were still good things in the world. As the weeks had passed she found that she had to add a candle less and less frequently; first it was once a week, a taller candle; then it was fortnightly, one with larger girth. Someday she hoped it would just be once a year that she added a new candle to her room.
But today she felt more lost than she'd been in months. So she'd taken her flame lighter and lit every single one of them in her room, filling it with a warm yellow glow. Bathed in the mellow candlelight she'd retreated to her couch and taken out her albums of old holographs, reflecting on her life. She thumbed to the first few pages of the book, taken when she'd been very young. A small girl with dark tousled hair and bright impish eyes grinned out at the world, sequestered in the comfort of her parent's arms. How young they looked, untouched by the ravages of the Dominion War. They'd been on shore leave, taking a refuge from the Cardassians in the lush tropics of Risa. They were such simple times.
Tighe flipped further downwards, and she grew progressively older in the pictures; less carefree, her eyes growing darker and more haunted as the years passed. The last picture was taken mere days before her mother's accident, on the bridge of the Enterprise-F. Her mother was sitting in the command seat, her father standing behind, and she was perched on the wide diagnostic panel on the left armrest, proudly wearing a new second pip on her collar. Yet there was a strained quality to it; in the way she sat uncomfortably on the edge of the armrest, her father's hand gripping her mother's shoulder tensely, the forced smiles. It seemed as artificial and contrived as the environment around them.
She shook her head inwardly. I should never have gone on that trip, she thought. Prior to that she'd been assigned to the starship Silver Nova, and she hadn't seen either parent in months. Her visit to the Enterprise was a weak gesture, at most, to symbolize some kind of reconciliation, an attempt on her part to improve their strained relationship. But the untimely tragedy had left too many things unsaid between them, and in the month that had ensued she'd been to tied up in grief to spare a thought for her father, and then he'd gone to seek her mother. Tighe's lips tightened. Mistake after mistake.
Her door chimed and the computer informed her that she had a visitor from the Voyager. Thinking it was Kim, she brightened and shut the book, straightening in the chair. "Come."
The door slid open, and Janeway was standing in the frame, hesitant. "May I come in?"
Tighe nodded wordlessly, and she stepped into her quarters, allowing the door to slide shut beside her. She crossed the room and sat opposite Tighe on the couch without saying a word. For a moment the two women simply sat and stared at each other, saying nothing at all. Then, as if on impulse, Tighe flung her arms around Janeway's neck and hugged her tightly.
When they'd broken from the embrace it seemed as if a barrier had been broken between them. "We need to talk," said Janeway.
"Yes," agreed Tighe. "There are… were so many things left unsaid."
"Or never had the chance to be said," added Janeway. "Amanda…" she took the girl's hand gently, "you must know that you did exist in this universe- for six weeks, at least. Before the accident."
Tighe's eyes grew wide in sudden understanding. "You had a miscarriage?"
Janeway nodded. "On Earth there is a small plot on Starfleet Academy ground with three crosses on it: one for my father, one for Justin… and one for you." She paused, her voice dropping. "I used to put flowers there every year…"
Tighe placed her other hand over Janeway's. "But you haven't been able to do it for the past few years because you've been out here in the Delta Quadrant…"
Janeway looked up at Tighe and smiled sadly. "I have a holodeck program on this ship… a Leonardo Da Vinci program. Every anniversary I went there to shut myself away from the world for a while, to draw, and sometimes I would wonder what life would have been like if things had been different."
"It should have been wonderful," reflected Tighe distantly.
"It must have been," rejoined Janeway.
"I remember… it was my seventh birthday, and you were trying to bake a chocolate fudge cake, and you nearly destroyed the replicator making it. Of course, the cake was an unmitigated disaster."
"Sounds familiar," said Janeway, laughing.
"So in the end we forced Dad to eat it all… we couldn't stop laughing at the faces he made." Tighe smiled at the memory. "He couldn't finish it all, of course… so we had a food fight."
"A food fight," said Janeway wonderingly. "It must have been fun."
"It sure was." Tighe sighed and drew her knees up to her chin. "I miss those days."
Janeway looked down, unsure of what to say, not knowing how to convey the empathy, the loss that she felt. "Well…" she paused. "At least we have the time now."
Tighe smiled. "That's right. And… I mean, you're not actually my mother, in the real sense, but there were so many questions I wanted to ask that I never got the chance to." She frowned. "And now, meeting you here… it's almost like a second chance."
"A second chance?"
"To get to know you." Her mouth quirked. "It was the biggest mistake of my life, but when you… my mother… was alive, I kept a distance." Her brow creased. "I had so much misguided anger in me and I vented it on my parents… we weren't exactly the best of friends."
Janeway held her hand tightly. "Growing up in the midst of one war after another… I wouldn't have blamed you. My father spent so much time away from home fighting the Cardassians… it made me angry, too."
"Not half as angry as I was, I'll bet. The moment I graduated from Starfleet Academy I sought an assignment that would take me out to the furthest reaches of space, far from anywhere Starfleet's flagship would be posted. Not only that, I hardly ever replied to transmissions as well." A sardonic, bitter smile crossed her face. "It must have been really cruel."
Janeway carefully considered this anguished young woman before her and wanted to weep. How could she- her alternate self- have pushed her daughter so far away? Even if the girl had tried to isolate herself she might at least have tried to reconcile their differences. "I don't know about you, but I think they must have loved you. Very much." She gazed into Tighe's eyes. "I would have."
Tighe gave her a crooked smile. "Oh, I'm sure she did. The problem is that I wasn't reciprocating much of it." Her voice grew rough with emotion. "Until after she died, that is."
"I'm sorry," was all Janeway could think of to say.
"Don't be," said Tighe, breaking into an abrupt smile. "You're still here. We can talk."
"Yes," said Janeway, "we can talk."
Tighe leaned forward on the couch, propping her chin up with her elbows. "Tell me more about your childhood…"