Disclaimer: These people are not mine - says you. At least I care for them!
Comment: I am very, very sorry for two things. First, a stupid spelling mistake made my comment to Maja come out all wrong. I didn't mean "you're wrong, but I like your writing", I meant "you're wrong about your writing, I think it's great"!!! Please, if you're reading this, accept my sincerest apologies. Your review was the most amazing I ever got, and can't begin to thank you for it. (The second best I got a week ago; someone anonymous who called him/herself "bleh" wrote something like "I never thought one could actually write as bad as you. You must feel very, very special." I thought that was very good. And, as a matter of fact, I do.)
Second - I'm awfully sorry this is so late. I had a bad case of writers block. I kept writing and deleting, writing and deleting, until even the writing stopped. I'm not completely over it yet, but I've decided I need to stop hiding away and being a coward. So this is the best I can do for now. Poor Kathryn, not much fun in it for her, either.
I'll understand if you don't want to read or review anything else of mine ever again - but you also know that I need you comments and thoughts.
Oh, by the way, the piece of music I'm so clumsily describing is the second movement of Bach's concerto for two violins, BWV 1043.
Chapter 4: Concerto for two violins
The water was less than lukewarm now, and so murky she couldn't see her own body lying in the bathtub. Her skin was numb, her limbs might as well not exist. Kathryn moved a hand and watched the ripples on the surface. Then she raised it until all the fingers, the palm and the wrist were above water. She wriggled the fingers, and they responded, but it didn't feel like they were part of her; the whole hand seemed detached, and she looked at it with slight revulsion, as she would look at a twisted, dead tree in a gray, alien landscape. She raised the arm a little more, looking for the scars that would prove that blood had once pulsated there - but they were all gone by now, of course.
She blew out the candle that she had stuck to one edge of the bathtub. Darkness settled in immediately, swallowing everything so completely that Kathryn gasped in shock. What a difference one candle can make. Now you see, now you don't. Now you're here, now you're - somewhere else? The cold crept into her bones. She let her head sink into the water and held it there, listening to the rush of her blood, the beating of her heart. When she closed her eyes she could still see it, imagine with her mind's eye the millions of cells, constantly reproducing, all the myriads of delicate balancings and adjustments that kept her alive. Like the thousands of operations per second that kept a starship warping through space, the replicators replicating, the holodeck producing whatever you programmed into it. And if she held her head under water a little longer, just a little longer, it would all stop, and there would be silence. Silence...
"Kathryn? Are you all right in there?" A knock on the door. Her mother's voice. Urgent, not even pretending to be casual. Almost accusing. Oh mother, just a little longer...
"Doctor? Doctor, come up, hurry!" Steps in the hall below, running up the stairs. "Kathryn!!"
She emerged and tried to suppress her first ragged gulp of air. "I'm here, mom, I'm ok!"
"Open the door, captain!"
Kathryn winced. Would he never stop calling her that? "I can't, I - I have shampoo in my eyes. I was washing my hair, that's why I couldn't hear you."
"Oh..." Yeah, now you're embarrassed. Serves you right, Kathryn thought.
"Do you need help, darling?" Her mother's voice again, soothing now, as if speaking to a sick - and not very bright - infant. Kathryn set her teeth and dug her fingernails into her handballs.
"No, I'm fine, I'll be out in a minute." After she heard the steps go down the stairs, she added softly: "The water is cold now anyway." And then, in a whisper: "And it's so dark..."
"She's not getting any better, isn't she?" Gretchen's voice was matter of fact, her face was averted, her hands busy with the preparations for dinner, but the doctor knew about the sadness, the helplessness in her eyes. It was always there.
"It is hard to say. These things take their time..."
"'These things'? My daughter tried to take her own life! That is not just 'one of these things', doctor!"
"I know."
Gretchen's fury ebbed down as quickly as it had flared up. "I'm sorry doctor, I didn't mean to..."
She sighed and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I suppose I'm still a little shaky about earlier. I thought she'd-"
She couldn't finish the sentence. Instead, she sat down at the kitchen table beside the doctor.
"I wish I could tell you she *is* getting better, or at least how long it will take before she starts getting better, but I can't. I can't even tell you what's wrong with your daughter, except that she's very sad, and I think she's been sad for a long time. And that I am convinced that right now, this is the best place for her to be. Of course, I can understand your frustration. Believe me, I share it, more than you might be aware of. If you feel you should resort to more specialized help-"
"A Starfleet shrink, you mean? No thank you: I know that's the last thing she'd want, if she - well, if she could think clearly."
"It doesn't have to be a Starfleet *shrink*." The doctor winced at that, since he considered himself somewhat of a psychiatrist, in his own modest way. But this was no time to argue about terminology. For all the good his psychiatry was doing the captain... "There are many extremely capable professionals outside Starfleet that would be happy to-"
"Doctor, please, we've been through this. You and I know that they would end up reporting all of this to Starfleet and turning Kathryn over to them as well. It would show up on her record, the media would be delighted to finally get one really gory story out of Voyager's return, her crew and friends would get involved..." Gretchen leaned over and put her hand over the doctor's. This gesture and the earnest look she gave him were so like her daughter that it very nearly made him shiver. So many times she had looked at him just like that, and spoken those same words:
"I trust you, doctor. I know you would only do what's best for her."
He sighed. "I would, if I only could *do* something! But she wont let me try any therapeutic approach, no hypnosis, no psycho-cognitive analysis, she won't talk, she won't go on walks or for a swim, she won't even take the herbs I recommend! She denies anything might be wrong with her, and I can't treat a patient that won't admit she's sick."
"Well, maybe she'll come around. It's just been a week, it's too soon to tell either way - isn't it?"
Gretchen's eyes were begging him to say it was, so he said it, and she didn't believe it, but pretended to, and went back to preparing dinner - a vegetable quiche, one of Kathryn's favorites which, they both knew, she wouldn't eat. She'd just sit there, between the two of them, pushing the food around on her plate and talking very loud and very much about nothing at all. That was what frightened Gretchen most of it all (except those bloodied shards of glass she kept seeing in her nightmares) - not the silences, the moods, the screams at night. Kathryn loved to listen to other people, and when she spoke you could see she cared about that too, about how her words made others feel, and what they meant. She never spoke lightly - Kathryn was never much for small-talk. And now it was all she did.
Upstairs, Kathryn sat in front of the desk in her old room, wrapped up in a towel, hair still dripping - the same room she had woke up in for the first sixteen years of her life, the same room she had stayed in for more than a month after her father died - the room that had seen the best and the worst of her, her innocence and her despair, first love and deep anguish, exalted dreams and pitch-black nightmares.
Except no one ever sees the worst of it, Kathryn thought. You think you've seen it, you think you know what it's all about, you think you're *over* it - and the next minute you find out you didn't have a goddamn clue. And the *next* thing you know is you've crashed a bottle of vodka and are writing something on your arm with a piece of it.
An inviting smell was coming from downstairs. There were goosebumps all over Kathryn's skin, but still she didn't move or call for lights. When the small comm-console on the desk beeped, she jumped convulsively to her feet and dropped the towel. Instinctively, she hit the receiver and said "Janeway here" to the empty screen. Instead of showing a face, the screen remained empty, and the computer's voice said: "Incoming recorded message from Commander Chakotay. Do you wish to receive?" Before she had had time to consciously think about it, her mouth had already taken the decision for her: "Yes."
It was a short message. Just his face against a light background.
"Hello, Kathryn. I'm sending this to your mother's place, because I have a feeling that's where you might be. I've been trying to contact you - we all have - but you seem to have disappeared. Which is good for you, I suppose; I know I would if I could. I thought all the questionings and welcome-receptions were bad, but now that part seems to be over - and it's getting worse. The big boys are deciding what to do about me and telling me to sit tight until they are done, I can't go anywhere or do anything, and every other minute there's someone from the press knocking at my door, claiming to be my best friend and wanting me to tell my *story*." A sigh. "To tell you the truth, Kathryn, I don't feel so good most of the time. It's taken me some time to figure that out, with so much going on... But now it's quieter, and Seven is away very often, so..." Here he looked away and then straight at the camera again. "Anyway, that's not why I'm sending this message. I just - I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you, and that I'd love to talk to you, if you feel like it." He hesitated, but only a second, before adding: "I miss you. It's taken me some time to figure *that* out, too, it seems. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to do something about that."
There was a little quirk in the image, as if he had shut if off and then quickly turned it on again. "Oh, I'm sending you something with this. I heard it the other day, and it reminded me of the day we listened to it after dinner - you said you couldn't believe I had never heard it before. Afterwards, I couldn't believe it either... and I've been hearing it ever since. Only lately I forgot it was there. Do you remember?" Chakotay's face on the screen smiled once more, then disappeared. The computer's voice said: "Attached file, audio only. Do you wish to receive?"
No, no, no, I *don't* want to receive, I don't want to hear anything, why don't you all just leave me alone? I'm all through with that, can't you respect my decision?
But she didn't say it out loud, she didn't leave the room, and she didn't smash the computer on the floor. Instead, she heard a tiny voice that couldn't possibly be hers whisper: "Yes." Kathryn could barely hear herself, but the computer apparently did, because suddenly there was music in the air. A violin, singing a sweet, somehow self-contained melody, like someone lost in thoughts that were not always happy, but fulfilling. Then a second violin joined the first, and what had been a lonely musing now became a dialogue: two voices raising, sharing the same thought, the same soul, but singing it with their own tune, at their own particular pace.
Kathryn listened to all of it, standing right in the middle of the room, naked. When it ended, there were tears running down her face. She touched them, them put the finger to her lips, tasted the salt and thought, in wonder: "Well, what do you think of that!"
Comment: I am very, very sorry for two things. First, a stupid spelling mistake made my comment to Maja come out all wrong. I didn't mean "you're wrong, but I like your writing", I meant "you're wrong about your writing, I think it's great"!!! Please, if you're reading this, accept my sincerest apologies. Your review was the most amazing I ever got, and can't begin to thank you for it. (The second best I got a week ago; someone anonymous who called him/herself "bleh" wrote something like "I never thought one could actually write as bad as you. You must feel very, very special." I thought that was very good. And, as a matter of fact, I do.)
Second - I'm awfully sorry this is so late. I had a bad case of writers block. I kept writing and deleting, writing and deleting, until even the writing stopped. I'm not completely over it yet, but I've decided I need to stop hiding away and being a coward. So this is the best I can do for now. Poor Kathryn, not much fun in it for her, either.
I'll understand if you don't want to read or review anything else of mine ever again - but you also know that I need you comments and thoughts.
Oh, by the way, the piece of music I'm so clumsily describing is the second movement of Bach's concerto for two violins, BWV 1043.
Chapter 4: Concerto for two violins
The water was less than lukewarm now, and so murky she couldn't see her own body lying in the bathtub. Her skin was numb, her limbs might as well not exist. Kathryn moved a hand and watched the ripples on the surface. Then she raised it until all the fingers, the palm and the wrist were above water. She wriggled the fingers, and they responded, but it didn't feel like they were part of her; the whole hand seemed detached, and she looked at it with slight revulsion, as she would look at a twisted, dead tree in a gray, alien landscape. She raised the arm a little more, looking for the scars that would prove that blood had once pulsated there - but they were all gone by now, of course.
She blew out the candle that she had stuck to one edge of the bathtub. Darkness settled in immediately, swallowing everything so completely that Kathryn gasped in shock. What a difference one candle can make. Now you see, now you don't. Now you're here, now you're - somewhere else? The cold crept into her bones. She let her head sink into the water and held it there, listening to the rush of her blood, the beating of her heart. When she closed her eyes she could still see it, imagine with her mind's eye the millions of cells, constantly reproducing, all the myriads of delicate balancings and adjustments that kept her alive. Like the thousands of operations per second that kept a starship warping through space, the replicators replicating, the holodeck producing whatever you programmed into it. And if she held her head under water a little longer, just a little longer, it would all stop, and there would be silence. Silence...
"Kathryn? Are you all right in there?" A knock on the door. Her mother's voice. Urgent, not even pretending to be casual. Almost accusing. Oh mother, just a little longer...
"Doctor? Doctor, come up, hurry!" Steps in the hall below, running up the stairs. "Kathryn!!"
She emerged and tried to suppress her first ragged gulp of air. "I'm here, mom, I'm ok!"
"Open the door, captain!"
Kathryn winced. Would he never stop calling her that? "I can't, I - I have shampoo in my eyes. I was washing my hair, that's why I couldn't hear you."
"Oh..." Yeah, now you're embarrassed. Serves you right, Kathryn thought.
"Do you need help, darling?" Her mother's voice again, soothing now, as if speaking to a sick - and not very bright - infant. Kathryn set her teeth and dug her fingernails into her handballs.
"No, I'm fine, I'll be out in a minute." After she heard the steps go down the stairs, she added softly: "The water is cold now anyway." And then, in a whisper: "And it's so dark..."
"She's not getting any better, isn't she?" Gretchen's voice was matter of fact, her face was averted, her hands busy with the preparations for dinner, but the doctor knew about the sadness, the helplessness in her eyes. It was always there.
"It is hard to say. These things take their time..."
"'These things'? My daughter tried to take her own life! That is not just 'one of these things', doctor!"
"I know."
Gretchen's fury ebbed down as quickly as it had flared up. "I'm sorry doctor, I didn't mean to..."
She sighed and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I suppose I'm still a little shaky about earlier. I thought she'd-"
She couldn't finish the sentence. Instead, she sat down at the kitchen table beside the doctor.
"I wish I could tell you she *is* getting better, or at least how long it will take before she starts getting better, but I can't. I can't even tell you what's wrong with your daughter, except that she's very sad, and I think she's been sad for a long time. And that I am convinced that right now, this is the best place for her to be. Of course, I can understand your frustration. Believe me, I share it, more than you might be aware of. If you feel you should resort to more specialized help-"
"A Starfleet shrink, you mean? No thank you: I know that's the last thing she'd want, if she - well, if she could think clearly."
"It doesn't have to be a Starfleet *shrink*." The doctor winced at that, since he considered himself somewhat of a psychiatrist, in his own modest way. But this was no time to argue about terminology. For all the good his psychiatry was doing the captain... "There are many extremely capable professionals outside Starfleet that would be happy to-"
"Doctor, please, we've been through this. You and I know that they would end up reporting all of this to Starfleet and turning Kathryn over to them as well. It would show up on her record, the media would be delighted to finally get one really gory story out of Voyager's return, her crew and friends would get involved..." Gretchen leaned over and put her hand over the doctor's. This gesture and the earnest look she gave him were so like her daughter that it very nearly made him shiver. So many times she had looked at him just like that, and spoken those same words:
"I trust you, doctor. I know you would only do what's best for her."
He sighed. "I would, if I only could *do* something! But she wont let me try any therapeutic approach, no hypnosis, no psycho-cognitive analysis, she won't talk, she won't go on walks or for a swim, she won't even take the herbs I recommend! She denies anything might be wrong with her, and I can't treat a patient that won't admit she's sick."
"Well, maybe she'll come around. It's just been a week, it's too soon to tell either way - isn't it?"
Gretchen's eyes were begging him to say it was, so he said it, and she didn't believe it, but pretended to, and went back to preparing dinner - a vegetable quiche, one of Kathryn's favorites which, they both knew, she wouldn't eat. She'd just sit there, between the two of them, pushing the food around on her plate and talking very loud and very much about nothing at all. That was what frightened Gretchen most of it all (except those bloodied shards of glass she kept seeing in her nightmares) - not the silences, the moods, the screams at night. Kathryn loved to listen to other people, and when she spoke you could see she cared about that too, about how her words made others feel, and what they meant. She never spoke lightly - Kathryn was never much for small-talk. And now it was all she did.
Upstairs, Kathryn sat in front of the desk in her old room, wrapped up in a towel, hair still dripping - the same room she had woke up in for the first sixteen years of her life, the same room she had stayed in for more than a month after her father died - the room that had seen the best and the worst of her, her innocence and her despair, first love and deep anguish, exalted dreams and pitch-black nightmares.
Except no one ever sees the worst of it, Kathryn thought. You think you've seen it, you think you know what it's all about, you think you're *over* it - and the next minute you find out you didn't have a goddamn clue. And the *next* thing you know is you've crashed a bottle of vodka and are writing something on your arm with a piece of it.
An inviting smell was coming from downstairs. There were goosebumps all over Kathryn's skin, but still she didn't move or call for lights. When the small comm-console on the desk beeped, she jumped convulsively to her feet and dropped the towel. Instinctively, she hit the receiver and said "Janeway here" to the empty screen. Instead of showing a face, the screen remained empty, and the computer's voice said: "Incoming recorded message from Commander Chakotay. Do you wish to receive?" Before she had had time to consciously think about it, her mouth had already taken the decision for her: "Yes."
It was a short message. Just his face against a light background.
"Hello, Kathryn. I'm sending this to your mother's place, because I have a feeling that's where you might be. I've been trying to contact you - we all have - but you seem to have disappeared. Which is good for you, I suppose; I know I would if I could. I thought all the questionings and welcome-receptions were bad, but now that part seems to be over - and it's getting worse. The big boys are deciding what to do about me and telling me to sit tight until they are done, I can't go anywhere or do anything, and every other minute there's someone from the press knocking at my door, claiming to be my best friend and wanting me to tell my *story*." A sigh. "To tell you the truth, Kathryn, I don't feel so good most of the time. It's taken me some time to figure that out, with so much going on... But now it's quieter, and Seven is away very often, so..." Here he looked away and then straight at the camera again. "Anyway, that's not why I'm sending this message. I just - I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you, and that I'd love to talk to you, if you feel like it." He hesitated, but only a second, before adding: "I miss you. It's taken me some time to figure *that* out, too, it seems. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to do something about that."
There was a little quirk in the image, as if he had shut if off and then quickly turned it on again. "Oh, I'm sending you something with this. I heard it the other day, and it reminded me of the day we listened to it after dinner - you said you couldn't believe I had never heard it before. Afterwards, I couldn't believe it either... and I've been hearing it ever since. Only lately I forgot it was there. Do you remember?" Chakotay's face on the screen smiled once more, then disappeared. The computer's voice said: "Attached file, audio only. Do you wish to receive?"
No, no, no, I *don't* want to receive, I don't want to hear anything, why don't you all just leave me alone? I'm all through with that, can't you respect my decision?
But she didn't say it out loud, she didn't leave the room, and she didn't smash the computer on the floor. Instead, she heard a tiny voice that couldn't possibly be hers whisper: "Yes." Kathryn could barely hear herself, but the computer apparently did, because suddenly there was music in the air. A violin, singing a sweet, somehow self-contained melody, like someone lost in thoughts that were not always happy, but fulfilling. Then a second violin joined the first, and what had been a lonely musing now became a dialogue: two voices raising, sharing the same thought, the same soul, but singing it with their own tune, at their own particular pace.
Kathryn listened to all of it, standing right in the middle of the room, naked. When it ended, there were tears running down her face. She touched them, them put the finger to her lips, tasted the salt and thought, in wonder: "Well, what do you think of that!"