Disclaimer: See chapter one, I'm tired of repeating the same old stupid lines. The "everything is negotiable"-line I stole from a Babylon 5 episode ("Shadow Dancing"), and the "despair and die"-line is not orininally mine either - it's from Shakespeare's "Richard the III".
Comment: It has been pointed out to me that captain Janeway would never try to commit suicide. For a more extended comment on that, refer to the end of this chapter. Please be assured that I am NOT dealing lightly with this matter, merely as a means to shock and baffle. A very close friend committed suicide a couple of years ago, and, if anything, that taught me that we can never NEVER know what's going on inside a person's mind, no matter how hard we try to understand, no matter how well we think we know someone. The way I write and what I write is partly influenced by that experience.
I know I'm not furthering the action much with this chapter, I have to admit that I concentrated more on the suicide-discussion than on the actual story. It will get better, I promise!
Review: Yes, please! I am very thankful for the constructive criticism I have already received, all I need are good reasons, even if I don't agree with them, so please continue sharing your thoughts with me. All I ask indulgence for are errors in spelling and grammar, English is not my native language and it's hard to find beta-readers around here.
Chapter 2: Oh, shit
Standing on the bridge, sitting in the command chair, even on the sofa in her ready-room or out of uniform, attending some festive gathering in the mess hall, Kathryn Janeway was an imposing woman, a woman who transmitted a certain power, in spite of her small stature and slight frame. It was more than an air of authority, more than the poise of someone who was accustomed to being in command - it was a very definite warmth that gathered around her, some kind of life-force and vividness that made one feel one had missed the real meaning of what life was until she entered the room.
Was it a paradox, or, in some quizzical way, in the "natural" order of things, that the doctor, not a living being himself, should be especially sensitive to this effect she had? Even on those occasions when she had been injured or ill, lying unconscious on one of the biobeds in sickbay, she had never seemed quite as fragile as she should have - it was as if there were very fine chords of steel strung up inside her, and the reverberation, the song those chords sung could be heard and felt around her body, if one listened closely enough. This was, of course, a wholly irrational and unscientific perception, but by now the doctor was well beyond being afraid of the unscientific and irrational.
As it was, the doctor had never really feared for the captain's life - somehow she always seemed to be so much more alive than anyone else he knew. Until now. As she lay on the biobed in Voyager's deserted sickbay, she looked not only pale and ill, not only small, but *brittle* somehow, papery, as if the mere brushing of a fingertip could undo her. After repairing the damage she had done on her wrists (the wounds were nasty-looking but not deep) and giving her a transfusion, he just sat there, pervaded by a feeling of utter bewilderment. This was so incomprehensible... After the initial relief of knowing that she would survive, the doctor felt capable of nothing more than to sit there by her side and ask himself-
"Why?"
It was not really a question, but a reproach. Tom's voice was filled with fury, and the same dazed bewilderment the doctor felt.
"Why would she do this to herself? Now that we're home, not that we finally made it - *she* made it, goddamn it, she changed the fucking future to get us home, and now..."
"I don't know, Tom. I don't know." It was the first time he had actually called him Tom instead of Mr. Paris. Yeah, watching your captain nearly die from self-inflicted injuries can make you feel really close, Tom thought wrily.
"Will she be all right?"
"Physically - yes. She has not lost a great amount of blood."
"But - she was unconscious, couldn't move..."
"There were also glass splinters, you said, didn't you? Well, my guess is that those splinters were once a bottle, or several bottles, and those were *not* full of synthehol."
"Oh my God..." The mere thought of the captain dinking herself into a stupor, then shattering a bottle and slashing her wrists open with the splinters made Tom's stomach turn. A wave of nausea overcame him. The doctor must have seen him turning green. He said:
"There is nothing you can do here now, Mr. Paris. You might as well go home."
"No, I want to stay, I... I want to know..."
"I don't think that would be wise. Tom-", the doctor laid a hand on his shoulder, "we have a very delicate situation here. Under normal circumstances... were she anyone else, I would have to notify Starfleet authorities immediately, the captain would be transferred to a hospital and then subjected to *thorough* treatment. Now, you and I know that these are *not* ordinary circumstances, and we don't really want anyone to know about this, do we?"
Tom shook his head, though somewhat hesitantly.
"What we want", the doctor emphasized, "is to help her. It is my professional as well as my personal opinion that we can do that, but we have to be very cautious. We can't rush or push her. We know she never does anything unless she really means it, so we can assume that, if only for a moment, she had the intention of ending her life. Just that she didn't succeed this time doesn't mean she won't try again. She's nothing if not persistent."
"So what do you suggest, keeping her confined or what? I just want to talk to her, let her know... I don't know, that - that I'm here... that we all are, B'Elanna, Miral and me, we... and the others, Harry, Tuvok, Chakotay... shouldn't we let them know? I'm sure they would want to help, too."
"For Gods sake, Mr. Paris, that would be the worst possible idea! What she needs is to come to terms with herself, not explain her actions to a lot of upset, worried people. You know her, if she felt she had caused others pain of worry she would only feel guilty. Please, *please*, don't tell anyone. I know, I know, you will tell B'Elanna eventually, but please tell no one else. Especially not Chakotay."
"Why Chakotay?"
"I can't really tell, but I have the feeling that it is important - that it would be important to her. They had a - special relationship."
"Yes, I guess you're right." Tom nodded. Suddenly he felt defeated, and very, very tired. All he wanted was to hug his wife and hold his daughter, inhale the sweet, new scent of her.
"You... you'll take care of her, won't you, Doc?"
"Yes, I will, Tom. I will." The boldness of this statement gave the doctor a brief sensation of vertigo, but he stood by it and looked Tom steady in the eye. "You have done enough already. You have saved her life. Everything else is negotiable."
"Thank God you were here, I don't know if I could have done it on my own."
"You underestimate yourself. If it hadn't been for you, I would have spent hours going over these files without - without knowing..."
They both looked at the still, small form on the biobed, so mercilessly outlined by the harsh light. Tom laid his hand briefly on her shoulder before leaving.
"Please tell her... tell her..." Only now came the tears, blurring Tom's thoughts as well as his words. But the doctor nodded as if he'd spoken them.
"I will."
Half an hour later, the doctor was still sitting beside the captain, pondering various courses of action - although his plan, simple enough was already formed - when the captain's eyelids began to flutter. She blinked a few times, then turned her head instinctively in his direction. He smiled reassuringly (or so he thought) and said the most innocuous words he could come up with:
"Good morning, captain."
"Good morning", she answered automatically. "What...?"
And then, as recent memories began to settle in, her body stiffened, her face hardened. She jerked her head away and muttered: "Oh, shit!"
The doctor's nod was friendly enough.
"Exactly", he answered.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
True, Kathryn Janeway is a tough woman, and during those seven years in the Delta Quadrant it seemed nothing could bring her down. And that's exactly my point.
You see, I don't believe it's the blows that finish you, but the constant strain. She survived the death of her first fiancé, the death of her father, the loss of Mark and so many other things. But between the woman who overcame all that pain (with considerable difficulty, remember her deep depression when her father died) and the woman we know by the end of Endgame, there lie seven years of constant strain. Every day, she had to bear an almost inhuman burden. Although the crew was mostly very supportive, the ultimate responsibility was hers. She isn't the type to second-guess her decisions, but that doesn't mean they don't weigh heavily on her, beginning with the guilt and doubt she must surely feel sometimes over her decision to destroy the Caretaker's ship rather than using it to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. There has been friendship and happy times, but there are some things you just can't share when you're a captain - it goes with the job. And if there's someone who is conscious at every moment about just what her job demands, that is Kathryn Janeway.
Let's face it, she has spent seven years more or less alone, as much forced by circumstances as by her own will, seven years constantly pondering duty, with only one idea, one thought to keep her going: "I have to get this crew home." And we have sufficient proof to believe that Kathryn Janeway is a woman that, as Kes put it, "feels things deeply". What do you think seven years of "deep feeling" and no one to share it with could do to a person, even a very strong one?
My premise is that, by the time Voyager reaches the Alpha Quadrant, Kathryn Janeway is a woman whose mental, physical and emotional limits have been stretched well past anyone's limits. She has endured the unendurable, has hardened herself, has denied herself her most deep desires, has finally brought her ship and crew home - and now what? Her life was that ship, she identified so closely with it, concentrated so hard on keeping her crew together and focused, that THAT ended up being all she was. Now her ship is not hers anymore, but just "a" ship, and her crew is not "hers", but just a group of people who set about their own business, because they don't have a common goal anymore.
The human mind works in a strange way. When we set all our energies on one goal and finally reach it, we expect some sort of an epiphany, we believe everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - will be all right all of a sudden. Health, success, love, and living happily ever after. But most of the times, life just goes on, and soon there's the next goal to reach. Only captain Janeway just doesn't have anything left in her to go on by. She's spent. We all have moments of deep despair. I'm not saying she was planning to do away with herself. But one moment is all it takes. I find it very unfair to demand from our "heroes" such a degree of perfection that puts them above and beyond any kind of fallibility. That's not why I watch Star Trek, not why I admire the character of Kathryn Janeway. I think she has the right to make her own mistakes, the right to say "I can't go on like this, to hell with it all", the right to despair and die. She is not the kind of person who would choose to go on with a life which doesn't make sense anymore, which doesn't seem to offer joy or wonder. She is wrong of course, life has still so much to offer her, but there is this one moment, sunk deep into that black hole, when she just can't see it. She'll need her friends to do that.
Chokatay choosing to be with Seven is not the main motive for Kathryn's attempted suicide. It's more like the final drop that makes the glass overflow. Many of us fans and fanfiction writers have had this vision where they reach home; the captain and Chakotay stand together on the bridge, watching earth approach; suddenly, they turn to each other, share a deep gaze and finally fall into each other's arms. If we have the right to have stupid fantasies, why can't they have them too? Knowing that they'll never come true has never kept us from dreaming dreams. I think that somehow, the captain's confused notion that everything would be all right once they were home included Chakotay. Of course, I am of the firm opinion that she has loved him all those years, or I wouldn't be writing this story. So now she finds herself with nothing left: she has no mission, no immediate perspectives, she believes she has lost her chance to love and be loved, and along the way she has lost herself. She doesn't know who or why she is anymore. Now she needs to find all that again.
Sorry, I know this has been excessively long. I kind of expected an objection to my portrayal of captain Janeway's attitude and I needed to justify this idea of mine because, as I stated above, I know this is no light matter. I use fanfiction as another way to explore human nature.
If you actually came this far, receive my admiration and gratitude. If you have any comments, you can e-mail me here:
soavezefiretto@hotmail.com
Comment: It has been pointed out to me that captain Janeway would never try to commit suicide. For a more extended comment on that, refer to the end of this chapter. Please be assured that I am NOT dealing lightly with this matter, merely as a means to shock and baffle. A very close friend committed suicide a couple of years ago, and, if anything, that taught me that we can never NEVER know what's going on inside a person's mind, no matter how hard we try to understand, no matter how well we think we know someone. The way I write and what I write is partly influenced by that experience.
I know I'm not furthering the action much with this chapter, I have to admit that I concentrated more on the suicide-discussion than on the actual story. It will get better, I promise!
Review: Yes, please! I am very thankful for the constructive criticism I have already received, all I need are good reasons, even if I don't agree with them, so please continue sharing your thoughts with me. All I ask indulgence for are errors in spelling and grammar, English is not my native language and it's hard to find beta-readers around here.
Chapter 2: Oh, shit
Standing on the bridge, sitting in the command chair, even on the sofa in her ready-room or out of uniform, attending some festive gathering in the mess hall, Kathryn Janeway was an imposing woman, a woman who transmitted a certain power, in spite of her small stature and slight frame. It was more than an air of authority, more than the poise of someone who was accustomed to being in command - it was a very definite warmth that gathered around her, some kind of life-force and vividness that made one feel one had missed the real meaning of what life was until she entered the room.
Was it a paradox, or, in some quizzical way, in the "natural" order of things, that the doctor, not a living being himself, should be especially sensitive to this effect she had? Even on those occasions when she had been injured or ill, lying unconscious on one of the biobeds in sickbay, she had never seemed quite as fragile as she should have - it was as if there were very fine chords of steel strung up inside her, and the reverberation, the song those chords sung could be heard and felt around her body, if one listened closely enough. This was, of course, a wholly irrational and unscientific perception, but by now the doctor was well beyond being afraid of the unscientific and irrational.
As it was, the doctor had never really feared for the captain's life - somehow she always seemed to be so much more alive than anyone else he knew. Until now. As she lay on the biobed in Voyager's deserted sickbay, she looked not only pale and ill, not only small, but *brittle* somehow, papery, as if the mere brushing of a fingertip could undo her. After repairing the damage she had done on her wrists (the wounds were nasty-looking but not deep) and giving her a transfusion, he just sat there, pervaded by a feeling of utter bewilderment. This was so incomprehensible... After the initial relief of knowing that she would survive, the doctor felt capable of nothing more than to sit there by her side and ask himself-
"Why?"
It was not really a question, but a reproach. Tom's voice was filled with fury, and the same dazed bewilderment the doctor felt.
"Why would she do this to herself? Now that we're home, not that we finally made it - *she* made it, goddamn it, she changed the fucking future to get us home, and now..."
"I don't know, Tom. I don't know." It was the first time he had actually called him Tom instead of Mr. Paris. Yeah, watching your captain nearly die from self-inflicted injuries can make you feel really close, Tom thought wrily.
"Will she be all right?"
"Physically - yes. She has not lost a great amount of blood."
"But - she was unconscious, couldn't move..."
"There were also glass splinters, you said, didn't you? Well, my guess is that those splinters were once a bottle, or several bottles, and those were *not* full of synthehol."
"Oh my God..." The mere thought of the captain dinking herself into a stupor, then shattering a bottle and slashing her wrists open with the splinters made Tom's stomach turn. A wave of nausea overcame him. The doctor must have seen him turning green. He said:
"There is nothing you can do here now, Mr. Paris. You might as well go home."
"No, I want to stay, I... I want to know..."
"I don't think that would be wise. Tom-", the doctor laid a hand on his shoulder, "we have a very delicate situation here. Under normal circumstances... were she anyone else, I would have to notify Starfleet authorities immediately, the captain would be transferred to a hospital and then subjected to *thorough* treatment. Now, you and I know that these are *not* ordinary circumstances, and we don't really want anyone to know about this, do we?"
Tom shook his head, though somewhat hesitantly.
"What we want", the doctor emphasized, "is to help her. It is my professional as well as my personal opinion that we can do that, but we have to be very cautious. We can't rush or push her. We know she never does anything unless she really means it, so we can assume that, if only for a moment, she had the intention of ending her life. Just that she didn't succeed this time doesn't mean she won't try again. She's nothing if not persistent."
"So what do you suggest, keeping her confined or what? I just want to talk to her, let her know... I don't know, that - that I'm here... that we all are, B'Elanna, Miral and me, we... and the others, Harry, Tuvok, Chakotay... shouldn't we let them know? I'm sure they would want to help, too."
"For Gods sake, Mr. Paris, that would be the worst possible idea! What she needs is to come to terms with herself, not explain her actions to a lot of upset, worried people. You know her, if she felt she had caused others pain of worry she would only feel guilty. Please, *please*, don't tell anyone. I know, I know, you will tell B'Elanna eventually, but please tell no one else. Especially not Chakotay."
"Why Chakotay?"
"I can't really tell, but I have the feeling that it is important - that it would be important to her. They had a - special relationship."
"Yes, I guess you're right." Tom nodded. Suddenly he felt defeated, and very, very tired. All he wanted was to hug his wife and hold his daughter, inhale the sweet, new scent of her.
"You... you'll take care of her, won't you, Doc?"
"Yes, I will, Tom. I will." The boldness of this statement gave the doctor a brief sensation of vertigo, but he stood by it and looked Tom steady in the eye. "You have done enough already. You have saved her life. Everything else is negotiable."
"Thank God you were here, I don't know if I could have done it on my own."
"You underestimate yourself. If it hadn't been for you, I would have spent hours going over these files without - without knowing..."
They both looked at the still, small form on the biobed, so mercilessly outlined by the harsh light. Tom laid his hand briefly on her shoulder before leaving.
"Please tell her... tell her..." Only now came the tears, blurring Tom's thoughts as well as his words. But the doctor nodded as if he'd spoken them.
"I will."
Half an hour later, the doctor was still sitting beside the captain, pondering various courses of action - although his plan, simple enough was already formed - when the captain's eyelids began to flutter. She blinked a few times, then turned her head instinctively in his direction. He smiled reassuringly (or so he thought) and said the most innocuous words he could come up with:
"Good morning, captain."
"Good morning", she answered automatically. "What...?"
And then, as recent memories began to settle in, her body stiffened, her face hardened. She jerked her head away and muttered: "Oh, shit!"
The doctor's nod was friendly enough.
"Exactly", he answered.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
True, Kathryn Janeway is a tough woman, and during those seven years in the Delta Quadrant it seemed nothing could bring her down. And that's exactly my point.
You see, I don't believe it's the blows that finish you, but the constant strain. She survived the death of her first fiancé, the death of her father, the loss of Mark and so many other things. But between the woman who overcame all that pain (with considerable difficulty, remember her deep depression when her father died) and the woman we know by the end of Endgame, there lie seven years of constant strain. Every day, she had to bear an almost inhuman burden. Although the crew was mostly very supportive, the ultimate responsibility was hers. She isn't the type to second-guess her decisions, but that doesn't mean they don't weigh heavily on her, beginning with the guilt and doubt she must surely feel sometimes over her decision to destroy the Caretaker's ship rather than using it to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. There has been friendship and happy times, but there are some things you just can't share when you're a captain - it goes with the job. And if there's someone who is conscious at every moment about just what her job demands, that is Kathryn Janeway.
Let's face it, she has spent seven years more or less alone, as much forced by circumstances as by her own will, seven years constantly pondering duty, with only one idea, one thought to keep her going: "I have to get this crew home." And we have sufficient proof to believe that Kathryn Janeway is a woman that, as Kes put it, "feels things deeply". What do you think seven years of "deep feeling" and no one to share it with could do to a person, even a very strong one?
My premise is that, by the time Voyager reaches the Alpha Quadrant, Kathryn Janeway is a woman whose mental, physical and emotional limits have been stretched well past anyone's limits. She has endured the unendurable, has hardened herself, has denied herself her most deep desires, has finally brought her ship and crew home - and now what? Her life was that ship, she identified so closely with it, concentrated so hard on keeping her crew together and focused, that THAT ended up being all she was. Now her ship is not hers anymore, but just "a" ship, and her crew is not "hers", but just a group of people who set about their own business, because they don't have a common goal anymore.
The human mind works in a strange way. When we set all our energies on one goal and finally reach it, we expect some sort of an epiphany, we believe everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - will be all right all of a sudden. Health, success, love, and living happily ever after. But most of the times, life just goes on, and soon there's the next goal to reach. Only captain Janeway just doesn't have anything left in her to go on by. She's spent. We all have moments of deep despair. I'm not saying she was planning to do away with herself. But one moment is all it takes. I find it very unfair to demand from our "heroes" such a degree of perfection that puts them above and beyond any kind of fallibility. That's not why I watch Star Trek, not why I admire the character of Kathryn Janeway. I think she has the right to make her own mistakes, the right to say "I can't go on like this, to hell with it all", the right to despair and die. She is not the kind of person who would choose to go on with a life which doesn't make sense anymore, which doesn't seem to offer joy or wonder. She is wrong of course, life has still so much to offer her, but there is this one moment, sunk deep into that black hole, when she just can't see it. She'll need her friends to do that.
Chokatay choosing to be with Seven is not the main motive for Kathryn's attempted suicide. It's more like the final drop that makes the glass overflow. Many of us fans and fanfiction writers have had this vision where they reach home; the captain and Chakotay stand together on the bridge, watching earth approach; suddenly, they turn to each other, share a deep gaze and finally fall into each other's arms. If we have the right to have stupid fantasies, why can't they have them too? Knowing that they'll never come true has never kept us from dreaming dreams. I think that somehow, the captain's confused notion that everything would be all right once they were home included Chakotay. Of course, I am of the firm opinion that she has loved him all those years, or I wouldn't be writing this story. So now she finds herself with nothing left: she has no mission, no immediate perspectives, she believes she has lost her chance to love and be loved, and along the way she has lost herself. She doesn't know who or why she is anymore. Now she needs to find all that again.
Sorry, I know this has been excessively long. I kind of expected an objection to my portrayal of captain Janeway's attitude and I needed to justify this idea of mine because, as I stated above, I know this is no light matter. I use fanfiction as another way to explore human nature.
If you actually came this far, receive my admiration and gratitude. If you have any comments, you can e-mail me here:
soavezefiretto@hotmail.com