TITLE: Return to the Borderlands (The Borderlands Trilogy #2)
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
PART: 2/3
CODES: J/C
RATING: G
DISCLAIMERS: Paramount owns the characters, the situations, and any other aspects of Star Trek: Voyager with real cash value. And if money is what you love, that is what you will receive…
SUMMARY: Two years after the events of "Encounter in the Borderlands," Janeway finds herself drawn back to her former first officer's side.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Encounter" was originally intended to be a one-shot, but I found that I just couldn't stand the hopelessness of the ending. Herein, I attempt to redeem Janeway and Chakotay's possible future.
Return to the Borderlands
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
In the tiny cabin of her personal courier ship, daVinci, Admiral Kathryn Janeway sat at a small desk. Tomorrow she would rendezvous with the Hastings, her flagship, to begin an inspection tour of the borderlands starbases. On the monitor before her flickered the monotonous letters of reports, describing the status of the various outposts she was soon to visit. At the moment, though, she could barely focus on the screen. Her thoughts were wandering.
Two years. It had been two years since she had last come to inspect the borderlands starbases. Since she had last seen him, her former first officer and longtime friend, Chakotay. Since she had learned that, in the thirteen years since Chakotay had left Starfleet, he had become a civilian pilot and businessman, flying a small vessel for the freight-shipping business he co-owned with Tom Paris. Learned that he had also become a husband, and a father, and a widower. And that he had aged. Janeway had been shocked by how much, but then, he was living on a colony world, with less than state-of-the-art medical care. She still remembered what Chakotay had looked like then, with his long, graying hair, his untidy beard, and crinkles about his eyes. Yet, though his appearance had been very different that of the first officer she'd once known, he'd still had the same warm brown eyes and contagious smile she recalled from the earlier days of their acquaintance.
He had been much in her thoughts lately, though she was not certain why — probably, she guessed, simply because she was travelling into the region where he lived and worked. Perhaps she should try to see him while she was on her inspection tour...she blinked, startled, feeling a sudden sense of urgency surging through her at the thought. I should go to him now, right away, this minute. The tour can wait. She shook her head and took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm. What the hell am I thinking of? I can't just neglect my duty to go gallivanting off on social calls. Duty, protocol...those had been her watchwords ever since Voyager had returned to the Alpha Quadrant, these eighteen years ago. She would visit Chakotay when and if her schedule permitted.
After a few more minutes of trying to study the reports on her screen, Janeway gave up and closed down the computer. She must be tired tonight; she couldn't focus. Stretching her cramped limbs, she rose from her chair and began preparing for bed.
The admiral tossed in her sleep, muttering restlessly, as the dream descended on her again.
She was sitting on a beach, one that had once been very well-known to her, but which she hadn't visited in a long time. The sky was blue and the sun bright, but a chill wind nipped the air, raising the small hairs on Kathryn's bare arms.
On the rock before her sat a salamander. Though it resembled many others of its kind, she knew its identity immediately: like the beach, it was familiar if long-unseen. Today the tiny creature seemed uncharacteristically agitated. Twitching and flailing its tail, it scurried to the end of the rock, then back again, looking up at her as if expecting some sort of response. Then it skittered off the opposite side of the rock, so that she had to stand to see where it had gone. It was moving toward the water, something in its miniature gait suggesting urgency.
Then she saw another creature on the beach, directly in the salamander's path. At the very edge of the breakers lay a big gray wolf, battered and evidently unconscious. Foamy white water washed over the magnificent creature, slowly but perceptibly rising, threatening to engulf and drown it. A wolf-puppy poked and nuzzled at the body, as if urging the larger wolf to rise, but to no avail. Even from this distance, she could hear the baby animal whimpering...
Janeway woke to the chirp of a communications link opening in her cabin. "Admiral Janeway?" came the voice of Marla Danvers, her Gamma Shift pilot.
Janeway blinked the sleep from her eyes, fisting one hand over her mouth to capture a yawn. "Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Sorry to wake you, ma'am, but we're being hailed by a civilian communications relay in the borderlands."
"Why tell that to me?" Danvers had authorization to handle routine communications.
"He says he needs to speak to you, ma'am. Says it's personal, and it's urgent."
Chakotay? She dismissed the thought impatiently; she had been spending far too much time thinking of him! Impossible. He wouldn't know where to find me.
"And ma'am — he's using the Fleet Admiral's personal clearance codes."
A civilian in the borderlands, using Admiral Paris's clearance codes? That could only be Tom, the admiral's son and Janeway's former pilot. But what did Tom tell the admiral to get the use of his private codes? And to find out where I am?
Only one way to find out. "Put him through, Lieutenant," she ordered, rising and moving to her monitor.
The screen flared to life and there he sat: Tom Paris, sure enough, though so changed from his days on Voyager that she would not have known him had she not seen so much of the admiral's collection of family pictures. At just over fifty, Tom had an angular face, the lower half masked by a heavy, gray-blond beard; a wavy fringe of hair, the same blend of colors as the beard, fell from slightly above his ears to just past his shoulders. He wore civilian clothes, of course, a coarse-woven pale-blue shirt partly covered by a dark-blue denim vest, both garments only serving to accentuate the still-bright blue of his eyes. Just now, those eyes were worried, the pale brows knit above them in a frown. "Admiral Janeway."
"Tom." She assayed a smile, but it didn't last long in the face of Tom's own expression. "It's good to see you."
He didn't return the pleasantry. "Admiral," he said urgently. "Thank God you were already in the region. You have to come to the Martinez Medical Center here on Metzlan. Right away."
"Is something wrong?" But the blood thundered in her ears, the picture rose up swift and certain in her mind, and before he could respond she knew the answer, knew whom this message was about. Chakotay. Oh God, Chakotay...
The bearded face twisted with pain. "It's Chakotay," he said heavily, confirming her intuition. "There's been an accident. I'm afraid he's—" Tom took a deep breath, started again. "The doctor says he might not make it."
Duty and protocol still dinned in the back of her mind, fighting for attention, but for once Kathryn Janeway would not let them have their say. Tom's words beat a steady rhythm in her head, loudly enough to drown out her old bywords: The doctor says he might not make it...
She had contacted the Hastings and rescheduled her rendezvous with them for a few weeks hence. Captain McMasters is probably getting a little tired of dealing with my whims, Janeway thought with grim amusement. It had been the admiral's own idea to move the inspections two months forward from their originally-scheduled date in the first place, and now she was the one who was moving them back. But either way, the timing of the inspections would still fall well within Starfleet's protocols for such matters. And it wasn't as if the stations were going anywhere, after all.
Then she'd instructed Danvers to set a course for Metzlan. DaVinci was about eighteen hours out from the colony planet now, and Tom Paris had their flight plan, so that he would know where to contact her if there was any news about Chakotay's condition. The doctor says he might not make it.
Impossible to think that Chakotay could die. Impossible that he could have survived decades in Fleet, years in the Maquis, and more years in the Delta Quadrant, survived Borg and Cardassians and Kazon and Borg again, to be felled by a senseless accident. According to Tom, he had been in Paris Shipping's maintenance hangar, working on some minor repairs to the stabilizer grid on his ship, the Guyasuta, when the fields holding the grid in place above him had shorted out. Chakotay had apparently tried to roll out of the way, but hadn't been fast enough; the heavy grid had laid the side of his head open. He'd suffered a cracked skull, a concussion, and related damage, not to mention the loss of a lot of blood.
Luckily for him, another member of his crew had been working not far away, heard the sound of the grid hitting the deck and Chakotay's stifled cry, and come to see what had happened.
Unluckily for him, it had been nearly half-an-hour before they could get him to the doctor. (At least it was a doctor, Janeway thought thankfully, remembering that Chakotay's wife Nakeema had died in childbirth for want of a medical professional. "We don't exactly have state-of-the-art medical care," he had told Janeway, years later, his dark eyes still haunted by the memory of Nakeema's death.) She had managed to stanch his wounds, and repair the worst of the damage to his skull and his face, but apparently even she was helpless to bring him out of the coma those injuries had caused. He lay comatose now, nominally alive but perilously close to being otherwise.
If he died now, before she had the chance to reach him, to speak to him, to tell him – tell him what?
She wouldn't think of it. He wasn't going to die.
She needed to compose herself and get some sleep. According to the ship's chronometer, it was 0315 San Francisco time, and she still had a long flight ahead of her.
Returning to her bunk, Janeway pulled the blankets over herself and tried to sleep. After what seemed a long time, she descended into an uneasy slumber.
Her animal guide stood before the big gray wolf, as close as it could come without being washed away itself by the tide. The wolf-puppy ignored the salamander, still focusing all its attention on the bigger creature, trying to chivvy it to its feet.
As Janeway approached, the pup picked up its head and looked at her. With a low growl and bared teeth, it moved between her and the adult wolf, clearly guarding its elder.
But Janeway understood puppies, and extended her hand cautiously for the baby wolf to sniff. "Easy, little one," she crooned softly, reassuringly. "I'm here to help." The puppy hesitated, as if considering her words, and licked her hand. Then it padded back to the big wolf, looked up at Janeway, and whined.
Drawing closer, Janeway could see what had felled the larger animal: a gash on the side of its head that had sheered away a chunk of fur and flesh. Her heart sank at the seriousness of the injury. What could she do?
First things first. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped her arms around the big furry body, under the forepaws, and tried to drag the wolf out of reach of the oncoming tide. But the wolf was slippery and heavy, a dead weight in her arms, and the tide was rising more quickly than she'd thought...
Janeway sat up abruptly, heart thundering, arms still aching with the weight of the wolf.
Martinez Medical Center turned out to be nothing like the huge, bustling medical centers Janeway was used to, back in the center of the Federation. It was a small, one-story building made of wood, with windows indicating perhaps thirty rooms. In the darkness of Metzlan's night most of those windows were curtained, little or no light spilling through.
Tom Paris met her at the door, catching her up in a tight, wordless hug that surprised her; though the pilot had always been a physical person, he had seldom demonstrated that trait with her. When he pulled back, she saw that his eyes were shadowed, the creases lining his face deeper than they had been just a day-and-a-half ago.
Fear kept her silent for a moment, before she managed, "Chakotay?"
Tom sighed. "No difference."
"Can I see him?"
"Of course." With the old-fashioned gallantry that seemed to come instinctively to the Paris men, he offered her his arm and led her into the building. The hall was white, bright and sparkling clean even if they were made of plaster rather than the soothing metal/plastic blend she was used to. As they walked through the corridor, the harsh smell of antiseptics assailed Janeway's nostrils, along with the scents of other chemicals she couldn't name. (Another difference from what she was used to; on Earth, hospitals were pristinely odor-free.) At this hour, there were few people about; the one man and two women they passed were carrying padds and bandages (cloth bandages? she thought, surprised at the sight), presumably members of the nursing staff.
"He hasn't come to since the accident," Tom told her softly.
That couldn't be good. "I thought you said the damage had been repaired."
"I did. It was. Everything the doctor could get to."
"What do you mean?" Janeway demanded, discomfited by the qualification.
"Our medical facilities aren't exactly state-of-the-art," he said, voice low, unconsciously echoing the words Chakotay himself had used, years ago, to explain his wife's death in childbirth. "She repaired everything she could get to. But apparently there's fluid leaking into his brain; she can't tell where or from what. She says it could be fixed – somewhere. But she doesn't have the tools here."
"Why not?" The words came out more harshly than she had intended.
"Captain – Admiral —" Tom said tightly, "this isn't a Starfleet medical facility. We don't get everything we need issued to us by some paper-pusher at headquarters. What we have is what we can afford." He stopped in front of a closed door. "Most of the time, it's enough." His lips pressed together in a line, the blue eyes darkening with what looked like pain as he opened the door.
The room was dimly lit, undoubtedly in deference to the hour, but it could have been a dozen times brighter and still all Janeway would have seen was him, Chakotay. Her former first officer lay upon and beneath white sheets in a bed almost as narrow as the one she remembered seeing in his quarters on the freighter Guyasuta. A bandage covered one side of his head, the whiteness of the fabric in startling contrast to the livid bruises that stood out on his olive skin. Some of his abundant hair had obviously been shaven off to allow treatment of his injury; the rest, long, wavy, and more gray than black, lay scattered over a thick ivory pillow. The eyes that Janeway remembered so well, the eyes that had conveyed so much, were closed now, and looked a little sunken in that broad-planed face.
Lights blinked and soft beeps sounded from an ancient medical monitor over his head; beneath it hung his medicine wheel, stones mounted in what Janeway assumed were their proper places. A thin line of tubing ran from an elevated fluid bag to some sort of port buried in one muscular forearm.
Janeway's heart hammered as she crossed the room to stand at his side. Reaching over to touch a broad, bared shoulder, she called "Chakotay," softly, foolishly, as if the sound of her voice would rouse him from his deep slumber. But of course he did not stir.
Tom's warnings of Chakotay's condition had done nothing to prepare her for the sight of him so still and pale and helpless, surrounded by primitive equipment that her scientist's judgment screamed was wholly inadequate to his needs. Panic squeezed her heart, tightening her grip on his shoulder, as the revelation hit her with full force: he might actually die, here, now, before her eyes. And she had never told him...never told him...
Behind her, someone yawned, a sound that somehow seemed too small to belong to Tom Paris. "Who are you?" a young girl's voice demanded sleepily. "What are you doing to my dad?"
My dad. Hand still on Chakotay's shoulder, Janeway turned. On a chair near the door, blinking the vestiges of sleep from her eyes, sat a long-limbed, black-haired girl, with the coltish build of a preadolescent. She had a look of Chakotay about her, something about the deep-brown eyes...
Tom Paris had already turned to the girl, kneeling down beside her cot. "This is Admiral Janeway, Lanaya. You remember hearing about Captain Janeway, back on Voyager? Well, this is her. And she's come to see him."
"Why?" the girl pressed.
"Because he wanted her to," Tom said gently. "He told B'Elanna and me years ago that, if anything happened to him, we were supposed to contact her."
"Why?"
"You can ask him that when he wakes up, Lanaya."
The girl's full lips trembled. "When will he wake up, Uncle Tom?"
"I don't know, Lanaya," Tom answered softly. "Soon." He looked over his shoulder at Janeway. "You'll have to excuse her, Admiral. She's tired. She's been here the whole time. I was just going to take her home when we got the word your courier was in."
"But I don't wanna go!" the girl protested, trying to stifle another yawn. "I wanna stay with my dad."
"Your dad would want you to get some sleep, honey. In a bed."
"Uncle To-o-om..."
"He'll be all right, Lanaya. He'll be right here when you get back."
"Promise?" She sounded even younger than her evident years, and her eyes were pleading.
Tom ducked his head and looked away from the girl, but he answered steadily, "I promise. Now come with me, honey."
Still looking unhappy, Lanaya pushed herself up and out of the chair. Walking over to Chakotay, she insinuated herself between Janeway and the head of the bed to place a kiss on her father's cheek, just below the snowy swath of bandages. "Bye, Daddy," she said, her little-girl voice almost breaking Janeway's heart. "I'll be back tomorrow." She looked up at the woman, a mere acknowledgement of her presence, and went to Tom, placing her hand in his.
He turned to Janeway. "Will you be all right? Do you want me to come back?"
She tried to smile at him, tried to put a captain's calmness and authority into her words. "I'll be fine, Tom. Get some sleep."
He looked uncertain. "If you need me or B'Elanna or – or anything – our comm number's at the nurses' station."
"I'll be fine, Tom." She thought it sounded convincing, but he did not seem reassured. Nonetheless, he left, leaving Janeway alone with her former first officer for the first time in two years.
It was not the reunion she had hoped for; yet it mattered that she was there, beside him. Even if he did not know it – would never know it – she had come to him when he needed her. She had not abandoned him. Again.
I never abandoned him, she argued with herself. He's the one who left. Still...
After her last brief encounter with Chakotay, Janeway had returned home, to Earth and her beloved Starfleet Command. Nothing much had happened in her absence; there was nothing she could point at and say, "this has changed since I left." And yet, things had not seemed the same. She had remembered the anger in her former first officer's voice, when she'd suggested that Tom and B'Elanna's daughter could continue her education at Starfleet Academy, and wondered at the cause of it. Why should he so resent the same organization that had trained him, which he had served for many years?
For the first time in years, she'd asked herself why Chakotay had left Starfleet a second time, only three years after Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant? When he left, he'd said it was because Starfleet had no place for a former Maquis, but she'd thought that surely that had only been his own sensitivity. He had encountered a few officials who resented his old renegade ties, and taken their opinion for Starfleet's position on the matter.
Thirteen years after his departure, she finally found the courage to look into Starfleet's position regarding the Maquis. Found that, of the small handful of Starfleet-officers-turned-resistance-fighters who'd survived the group's annihilation by the Cardassians and the Jem'Hadar, Chakotay was the only one who had ever been reinstated to Starfleet. That he and B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris (if Tom could truly be considered a Maquis, given his brief period of service) were the only ones who had received the offer. Perhaps a dozen former officers who'd become Maquis had gone on to act as Federation agents in the Dominion War, but even that service had not been enough to win them reinstatement. It had, however, gotten most released from prison.
Because he had mentioned the latest history texts and their view of the Maquis, Janeway had called up the Academy's preferred basic text, Federation History: An Overview, on her computer screen. And read, uncomfortably, the lines describing Chakotay's former allegiance as "a terrorist group whose violent acts precipitated the Dominion War."
Janeway had realized then, with some shame, that Chakotay had not been wrong, about Starfleet's view of him and his life, or in his decision to leave the Fleet. Why had she found it so much easier to believe in Starfleet's goodness than in his honesty?
And why had she let him walk away?
A tiny bleep from Chakotay's bedside monitor recalled Janeway to the present, and she looked down at the unconscious man almost with startlement. He was a graying, long-haired, bearded man now, a civilian and a colonist, not one of her officers. But he was Chakotay all the same.
Her hand found his shoulder again, and closed over it. Its warmth and breadth were much as they had always been, and, unbidden, her thoughts went back to the first time she had touched his bare shoulder, back on Voyager. To one of the first times she had almost lost him, after his flesh had been sundered from his spirit by a voracious alien entity who sought to consume the crew's very life force. She had touched him, felt the living pulse of his flesh beneath her hand, and realized in her bones, in her soul, that this was not some holodeck creature, not some creation of air and thought. Nor was it some alien who would capture her affections and depart, nor yet some being who existed only to fill his niche in the ordered arrangement of her ship. This was a man, a vital, breathing, not-entirely-predictable human being. And he had looked back up at her, with warmth, and vulnerability, and what she now (and on some level, had even then) recognized as affection.
They had flirted with one another a little bit by that point, casual, friendly byplay that acknowledged the other as an attractive being, no more. It occurred to her that it might be dangerous to keep flirting, that some day it might lead to demands she wasn't ready to meet. But there was a certain thrill to the risk, and so over the next months she continued, never letting him close enough for trouble.
Though she had come to care for him, she had not expected him to love her. Yet love her he did, as she learned one memorable night on New Earth when he crafted an "ancient legend" to reveal his feelings. Had they stayed on New Earth, she had no doubt they would have become lovers, and almost as little doubt that she would have found great pleasure in the relationship.
But of course they had not stayed on New Earth. Once back on Voyager, she remembered how nearly he'd stirred her to forget about her efforts to find a cure so that she could return to her ship and her duty. The memory frightened her a bit. Then they nearly lost – rather, did lose, and barely recovered – the ship to Seska and the Kazon, on a mission flown for Chakotay's sake, and she questioned whether her feelings for him had again interfered with her ship and her duty.
Since the lapse – if it had been a lapse – had almost cost them and their crew everything, she determined it would not happen again. From that day forward, she kept him at arm's length, refused to act on his declaration on New Earth, or even to acknowledge its existence. For a time, he resisted that, offering definite, but never forceful, reminders of his feelings. Finally, in the face of what he probably perceived as disinterest, he more-or-less gave up on engaging her deeper emotions, accepting friendship as the defining parameter of their relationship.
Each of them eventually formed other relationships, of varying levels of significance. None were long-lived. She told herself that was simply because of their circumstances, as they were seldom in one place long enough to form relationships with the natives, and perhaps it was even true. With each relationship, she made a mental note of well, that settles that, never quite articulating what "that" was. But as each one ended, they were back at one another's sides again.
Then Voyager returned to Earth, and for a time Janeway was so busy seeing to the welfare of her crew that she had no time to think of more personal matters. In any event, she thought he'd finally found a lasting relationship with Seven of Nine, and wouldn't be interested in anything more profound with her, Kathryn. (She never had learned what had ultimately caused them to go their separate ways.) But when the dust had settled, and everyone had found their respective places, he was still with Kathryn. Not aggressively or obtrusively, but still there, at her side.
Then he had gone, and she had not tried to stop him. And she had been alone.
Oh, there had been other people around her, a whole Fleet of them. And she had her commcall chats with her sister, and Sunday dinners with her nieces, and Tuesday lunches with Admiral Paris. But his loss had left a hole in her life, an emptiness at her center. She had barely known that, never acknowledged it, until the day two years ago when she had come to the borderlands on an inspection tour, and encountered him. And realized then, when it seemed too late, when he had finally and irrevocably moved on, what the emptiness in her heart was.
Her fingers reached out, as if of their own accord, and stroked a long, curling strand of hair where it lay on his pillow. "It was you," she said softly, the first words she'd spoken since Paris had left. "It was always you, wasn't it?" But of course he did not answer.
"Have you been lonely too?" Chakotay had a daughter, and B'Elanna and Tom for friends, and he'd had, however briefly, a wife. Janeway wondered if he'd loved his Nakeema, found herself hoping he had. She would hate to think he had been as alone as she...but no matter how he'd felt about Nakeema, she was gone now.
She remembered, just minutes ago, hearing Tom Paris tell Chakotay's daughter, "He told B'Elanna and me years ago that, if anything happened to him, we were supposed to contact her." Me. Janeway wondered suddenly when Chakotay had said that, if he'd had the same sense of revelation after their last meeting as she had.
She might never know, now, for here he lay, and if he were not already past all waking, perhaps he would soon be. Had she come all this way to stand here and watch him die? She still could not believe it. But standing here and seeing his pallor, his closed and sunken eyes, the primitive tube running into his arm to provide him drugs or nourishment, she could not deny the possibility, either.
If only she could get him to Starfleet facilities, to decent 24th-century medical care! According to Tom, the doctor had said his injuries could be completely repaired with the right facilities. Starfleet might have no love for Chakotay, but he had the right to claim a veteran's benefits from them, including use of their health-care system. She dared not have him moved now, for fear it would worsen his condition. But if he woke...if he woke, and his condition could be stabilized, she could take him to have him treated on her flagship, the Hastings, or on one of the bases she was inspecting.
She wondered how he would react to being commandeered like that, hauled off to a Starfleet facility whether he wished it or not. He might resent it, but she did not think he would refuse outright. Proud he might be, but not so proud that he would insist on dying when there were other alternatives. Probably his daughter would want to come with him, but that would be easy enough to arrange.
And if Chakotay were completely restored to health? What would Janeway do – what would both of them do – then?
She didn't know. He still had his life here on Metzlan, and she would eventually have to return to her own, back on Earth. She did not know if he would even want her to remain part of his life.
She did know he wanted that. He asked for me.
And she knew that she wanted him to remain part of her own life. It's been a long time since that night he told me the legend of the Angry Warrior. Maybe it's too late now, to claim what we might have had if I'd turned to him then. Maybe all we can be to one another, after all these years, is friends. But if that's all I can have, I want that.
And if it's not too late for something more...? Well, she would answer that question if the situation came to pass. The important thing was, that she would not let him walk away from her again. She knew what he meant to her, and she would not deny it any longer.
And all of this would be moot if he did not recover from his injuries now. She squeezed his shoulder and looked hard at him, willing him to wake, but he lay still.
Sighing, she drew a chair next to his bed and sat down, her hand on his upper arm as she settled in for what could be a long vigil. After a time she dozed, or thought she did.
Gripping the wolf's heavy, water-slicked body as tightly as she could, she managed to drag it out of reach of the encroaching breakers. She knelt over the creature, inspecting its injuries with her fingertips. The gash at the side of its head was not so bad as she'd feared, but it would still need care. She thought now that she might be able to help it.
Beside its – parent? – the little wolf whined, nosing at the larger animal as if trying to rouse it. Not far from all of them, her salamander watched and waited.
Suddenly one golden eye opened, and the wolf looked at her. With a sigh, it lifted its head and licked her hand.
Janeway started awake, to see Chakotay stirring. "Chakotay?" she breathed, her heart hammering.
Even her first sight of the Alpha Quadrant after seven lost years had not been so welcome to Kathryn Janeway as the sight she saw now: two warm brown eyes opening to look right at her. Nor had any sound been so welcome as that of a very familiar voice, hoarse and raspy, murmuring, "Kathryn."
At the dryness of the sound, she reached without thinking for his water glass, poured a little liquid into it, and put it to his lips so that he could sip. He accepted the drink with obvious gratitude, after a few moments turning his head aside to let her know he'd had enough.
She set the glass down and simply looked at him, at the wonderful opened eyes that told her it was not over, that all their chances were not lost.
He smiled at her tenderly, his expression as open and trusting as a child's, the affection that shone from it enough to steal her breath. "Kathryn. I knew you'd come."
She reached over and took his hand, squeezing it tightly. "For you, always."
I know you're out there somewhereSomewhere, somewhere
I know you're out there somewhere
Somewhere you can hear my voice
I know I'll find you somehow
Somehow, somehow
I know I'll find you somehow
And somehow I'll return again to you
"I Know You're Out There Somewhere," The Moody Blues
END
FEEDBACK
Camryn, thanks for the good words on "Encounter"! Hope you found "Return" equally vivid. I'm rewriting the third story right now, but I'll try not to keep you waiting too long to see how things work out.
