Part 15: Dark Mirror
Summary:
Janeway steps across the line when she deals with a Starfleet Captain committing genocide (JC, CT, PK, P/T, N)
Pairing:JC, CT, PK, P/T, N Rating: PG-13 Type of Story: Reflective Level: 3
Part 15: Dark Mirror
The ship rocked and Chakotay leaned against the bulkhead in his quarters to steady himself. He supposed it would make sense to find a better place to shelter during the fight. But he didn't want too. He had a fleeting vision of dying when a piece of bulkhead came flying. But he didn't care. What was important right now was that he die on his feet with some dignity. He knew he felt that way because he had been stripped.
He had never been relieved of duty in his entire Starfleet career. It seemed surreal to him and the events that lead up to it were painful…very painful indeed. Maybe that was the reason that he was looking through the viewport at the battle and trying hard not to think. Or maybe that was the reason why he was failing and thinking too much.
Another jolt rocked the ship. Chakotay was lucky that his quarters faced away from all key ship systems. From the feel of things, the Equinox's weapons were going right through Voyager's shields. And in that moment he panicked.
What the hell was going on up there?
Maybe he should say to hell with it and go up there and stop her by any means necessary. To take the step that she had left him no choice but to take. Or had she? He had left his insignia on the table in the conference room, walked alone off the bridge and back to his quarters. He could read the Bridge Crew's emotions as if there were signs on them when he did that. Those who looked up with surprise, looked down swiftly and the senior officers on the bridge looked surprised and scared at the same time. The Captain was in her chair when he walked out on the bridge and to the turbolift. He said nothing and she pretended that she was busy with something else. He walked right off the bridge, without a word, head held high and an inscrutable expression on his face. He wondered if any of them would have noticed that his insignia was missing. He supposed that some did.
He went back to his quarters of his own free will, with no guard. His phaser was in his quarters. He could stop her and a couple of times he had started to, but had stopped due to one question going through his mind over and over again.
What happens after?
What would happen after? Kathryn had lost it. He didn't think that it was possible for her to act the way that she was acting now. He knew her; she was closest to him than anyone else on this ship. He knew that she was capable of a lot, but even he could have never thought that she would sink this low. Would they ever come out of it? Would they make it? What would it take for Kathryn to stop? The destruction of the half the ship, the death of himself? Of her?
And if they did come out of it what then? If he staged a mutiny, how would the crew take it? He couldn't and wouldn't ask them to choose sides in this, and in the heat of battle? They were under enough strain as it was watching Kathryn sink deeper into the depths of obsession and watching the two of them pull away from each other. All of this after finding a Starfleet crew in the Delta Quadrant who had turned to genocide to survive and to do what they had also been trying to do; get home. Some crew would be broken by this encounter just like one of the Equinox crewmen when they found him. It would mean that if they ever survived this encounter, they would never survive the next one. The trust that they had struggled through for three years to build would be destroyed and they would have doomed themselves to die in the Delta Quadrant because they would have lost the ability to work together.
So he stayed in his quarters as the ship rocked again, hard.
Chakotay was thrown on the floor. That knocked some sense into him and he got up and went into the bath room and crouched in the corner furthest away from the outside bulkheads. He clutched his phaser, ready for anything.
The absurdity of the situation hit him. His ship was under attack, he was the second ranking officer on the ship and he was hiding in the bathroom of his quarters. Chakotay chuckled at that.
My place is on the bridge at the Captain's side,
At Kathryn's side
His place was at the Captain's side. Isn't that what he promised? And right now he wasn't the one fulfilling it, Tuvok was. If they ever made it through this, he was going to ask Tuvok, how he could stand by her and watch her act as irrationally and illogically as she had. He didn't understand how he could. There were 152 lives in the balance when you count the Equinox crew together with Voyagers', what about them? Who was looking out for them while one Captain chased a big white whale of a Starship across the Delta Quadrant?
Sitting crouched in the corner, he reflected on how he wouldn't have been surprised if Kathryn had done something like this during their first year together. Then it would have been no problem to have gathered the Maquis crew together and staged a mutiny. In the second year, he would have been a little surprised, but he would have still mutinied. But after the third year he couldn't, and he wouldn't. That was the year in the Delta Quadrant that really formed them into one crew. In the second year they saw it coming, especially during that time when they met the 37's on that planet. No one wanted to stay and build a new life in the Delta Quadrant, everyone wanted to get home and they began to believe that the Captain would get them there. At the end of the second year when they took back the ship from the Kazon and had successfully weeded out two traitors they were one crew; a Starfleet crew and a Maquis family.
Without the resources of the Federation behind them, the most Starfleet of the officers began embracing Maquis ways when necessary. And the Maquis having adequate resources began embracing the Starfleet way of doing things and adhering to protocols to ensure the efficient running of the ship. On either side, the transition was not easy, but they had done it and Kathryn had forged one crew that had made its mark on the Delta Quadrant as surely as the Quadrant had made its mark on them.
He had been so proud to be called a member of that crew and had felt so blessed and so gifted when they had become best friends and even in the past year a little closer than that; no maybe he should say that they transcended that. He admired so much in Kathryn, he saw in her a strength, an ease and a grace that she brought to her Captaincy. He had watched her grow into it over the years. But the raw material had always been there; her strength, her indomitable will, her certainty in her decisions and her actions; her acceptance of her Captaincy and the awesome responsibility it entailed, especially being here so far away from everything she knew. The Delta Quadrant polished off the rough edges and made her a Captain that he was proud to serve under. Kathryn never shied away from tough decisions and she accepted the consequences of all her decisions and actions even though no one from Starfleet was looking over her shoulder.
Will she accept the consequences of her actions now?
He didn't know what these consequences could possibly be at this instant, but he knew what he had saved her from before. The consequences of cold blooded murder. She didn't see it, she was so blinded by rage that she had shut down and shut out all dissenting voices. He knew that Kathryn was perfectly capable of having blinders, but not like this. The Captain that he was seeing, the Captain that was hunting down another Starfleet Captain, willing to sacrifice her crew and her one goal that had driven her for the past five years, the one willing to commit cold blooded murder to capture that other Captain, was a monster.
Chakotay shivered involuntarily as he remembered her face, so devoid of emotion as she almost doomed Lessing to his death and that same face as she relieved him of duty of duty. No Expression. When was the last time, if any, had he seen Kathryn without expression? He remembered he did once and the situation was just as alarming as this one was. Or maybe this was even more frightening than alarming because it didn't seem as though that expression broke. She had worn it from the first instance she had found out what Ransom was doing. Over the last two days, it did not change.
It seemed as though that Kathryn was so full of disappointment, hatred and rage that she had simply shut down. Her whole psyche could not take what was unfolding in front of her that she was operating under auto pilot, shutting down all her emotions so that she would, she could keep going, hunting killing until the monster that she saw outside her self would be destroyed. She didn't see that if she continued the on the same path, in destroying the monster, she would destroy herself and her crew.
Will Tuvok be able to stop that?
Chakotay then realized that the ship had stopped shaking and racing to the window he was just in time to see the Equinox limp away from Voyager ablaze. A moment later, he saw the flash of light that signalled its destruction.
Dear God!
It was a prayer that came to his lips.
He paced. It had been 15 mins since he saw the explosion, he hadn't heard a word. Not from the Captain or from anyone else. Not knowing what else to do he took out his medicine bundle intending to contact his spirit guide. He didn't know what the crew was in for, what he was in for now and he didn't know what inner resources he would need.
"Commander Chakotay, please report to the Ready Room"
Commander
As he made his way to the Ready Room, hope filled Chakotay from the first time since he found out what the Equinox crew had been up to.
Chakotay stood in front of her at attention. She had never seen him so stiff or so formal in a long time. Maybe since the first time that they joined crews in the Delta Quadrant. That was when they didn't know each other, before they had spent the last five years together guiding Voyager home.
She supposed she looked the same way, but she was sure it was for different reasons.
Kathryn wasn't feeling. No, that needed correction; she wasn't allowing herself feel anything.
Was there a difference? She asked herself. Rhetorically, because she knew that there was an important difference.
"The Equinox has been destroyed and the aliens have called off their attacks. Only five members of the Equinox crew survived the engagement. Captain Ransom defeated a mutiny, arranged to have the five survivors, Seven of Nine and our Doctor who had been replaced by the Equinox EMH and piloted the Equinox away from Voyager in order to prevent Voyager from being damaged. I've arranged for the Equinox crew to be brought here for debriefing."
"I've put into the ship's log that I've reinstated you Commander, effective immediately."
"Yes Captain."
If Chakotay and the Captain were in better straights he would have whistled. But as it was, he said a silent prayer of thanks to the Spirits guiding their tribe. Compared to what could have happened, they got off easy.
The question still remained
What happens now?
"Now, we have to find places for the Equinox members to fit into Voyager's crew," Kathryn got up from where she was sitting and walked in front of the desk. If she wanted to acknowledge it, then she would have asked why he hadn't come fully in to the Ready Room. He still stood at the door way as if he was afraid that if he were to step in, then the darkness, the evil that had enveloped her, would envelope him.
'I would like them to be supervised at all times until such a time that I deem fit. This time they will have to earn their trust aboard this ship."
Kathryn heard her voice utter the words, but she held her emotions fully in check. She knew that the question he had asked was not about the Equinox crew, but about Voyager's crew and more importantly, Voyager's Command Officers. But she wasn't going to face that now, not until she was alone and sufficient time had passed. Not until she was good and ready.
She hadn't understood what he was asking. Maybe it was a good thing, because as much as he wanted an answer to his question, he didn't think that he was able to face what he had seen in Kathryn right now. Right now he wished that he could just put it all out of his mind and to go back to the way that it used to be before they even picked up that distress signal and knew that they weren't alone in the Delta Quadrant any more.
"Yes Captain."
"Janeway to Tuvok" Kathryn used her Combadge to call her Chief of Security.
"Captain?"
"Escort the Equinox crew to meet us in the briefing Room"
"Us?" She could hear the slight catch in his voice. If she had told anyone else, they would have claimed that she imagined it. But she had known Tuvok long enough to recognize it, it was the Vulcan equivalent of hope.
"I've reinstated Commander Chakotay."
"Understood, Tuvok out." Chakotay heard the slight pause in the Vulcan's voice also. He wondered if it was relief or disappointment. Kathryn knew it was the former.
"The last time we welcomed you aboard you took advantage of our trust. You betrayed this crew. I won't make that mistake again."
Noah Lessing was at the end of the line and as she made that statement she glanced up at him. An unbidden thought came to her.
He shouldn't be here.
And yet another.
If it weren't for Chakotay, he wouldn't be.
For the sake of her own sanity, Kathryn was concentrating on what she was doing. She was beginning to feel and she knew that this was not a good thing. It could lead to reflection and to examination of conscience and for obvious reasons that was the last thing that she wanted to do. But she couldn't run from it forever and Chakotay's presence was reminding her of that.
He wasn't saying anything except what was expected of him and his expression was like hers, unreadable. But she wondered if he knew how much he said with his body language. Especially his use of distance. Three days ago, they would have been standing together without so much as two feet between them. Now he was keeping his distance from her. A whole room separated them as she spoke to the Equinox crew in front of the door as he was standing at the head of the table in the Conference Room. She knew it represented the chasm that had opened up between her first officer and herself.
Kathryn walked down the line again, calling each crew member by name as she did so. "Noah Lessing, Marla Gilmore, James Morrow, Brian Sofin, Angelo Tassoni: you are hereby stripped of rank. You'll be expected to serve as crewmen on this vessel. Your privileges will be limited. And you'll serve under close supervision for as long as I deem fit."
She looked at them all with fire in her eyes and with a deadpan voice. "This time, you'll have to earn our trust. Dismissed."
Just as I have to.
And with that unbidden thought passing through her mind as they filed out with Tuvok behind them, Kathryn began to feel.
It was almost as if her mind realized that it was now truly over and it was time to rebuild so that the emotions could begin to come trickling through.
Shame was the first emotion that she experienced and she knew that she had earned it and deserved it. It wasn't overwhelming, but there. Her mind and her soul was still refusing to face the full consequence of what she had done; what she was going to do.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him moving towards her, following her out of the conference room onto the bridge. But the distance was kept.
Just as I deserve.
Remorse joined shame. She tried to keep her feelings at bay a little while longer. There would be time for that later on. There were still other things…. "Repairs?" she asked softly, the emotions robbing her voice of its command timber.
"Coming along," Chakotay answered just as softly. Maybe his was marred by disappointment in her as his Captain and if that were true, she couldn't blame him.
"How's the crew?" Kathryn asked over her shoulder. They weren't the only ones who were affected by the events of the last three days, 143 crew members were suffering too. Especially those who had to watch, the ones who had seen the deterioration of their Captain with their own eyes.
"A lot of frayed nerves," Chakotay replied. Ours included was a thought that he didn't put into speech. It was too soon. But an effort was being made…..for something, he just didn't know what. The lines of communications were still open, though small in number and distorted. They would have to do their best and muddle through.
So far away from me…….as I was from him when he was calling me back and I didn't listen. I cannot face him
"Neelix is organizing a potluck...to help boost morale." He didn't know why, but he felt had to keep this conversation going. It was critical.
"Will I see you there?" Kathryn asked, not daring to turn around. She didn't know that she should have.
"I'm replicating the salad," He answered her, his arms were open, a little outstretched with his statement. But the symbolism was lost on Kathryn, her back was still to him. However her whole psyche was screaming out for her to turn around, but she denied herself and for his part, he wasn't making the first move, because if he were honest with himself he really didn't know who this woman was. Was this his best friend returning from three days ago? Or was this the stranger who had pulled so violently away from him during her hunt?
"I'll bring the croutons," Kathryn said, her voice heartbreakingly soft. She sounded like his best friend, but he wasn't sure and he knew that he couldn't afford to be wrong.
She did turn to look then and as she did, she saw him standing there. The man who was always at her side stood with his arms down and he faced her; he stood waiting; open.
What happens next?
She could not face him. She had to look down.
"Chakotay." It was her, she was back, but he was still cautious. Slowly he began to move towards her and he realized with surprise that she was moving towards him.
"Chakotay,...you know..." Kathryn struggled to get the words out. She swallowed hard before she could continue. "You may have had good reason to stage a little mutiny of your own."
That admission was the first step for her. And for him it was confirmation that his best friend was indeed on her way back, but there was still al lot of ground to cover. Chakotay was staring at her throughout her whole admission. He looked down at the end of it briefly. He was relieved. But he knew this woman, and for all of their sakes he had to make sure that she understood what she had done….what she was going to do. And as much as some part of him wanted to spare her the pain, guilt and remorse he was seeing on her face, another wanted to rub her face in it, to make sure that she never put the crew, never put their friendship in that situation again. But the part he listened to was the one that whispered gently, quietly to use the truth, not to wound but to heal.
Chakotay looked at her and his eyes never left her face, as hers wouldn't, couldn't, face his. He chose his words very carefully. "The thought had occurred to me…but that would have been crossing the line."
Yes Chakotay, I did cross the line and we both know it and I don't deny it.
That was what her face said when she finally looked at him and knowing that he could see it, she shifted her gaze to the floor, and spotted an object she had never seen before on the ground. Chakotay followed her gaze to what had so captured her attention.
The ship's official plaque. U.S.S. Voyager.
"Will you look at that," Kathryn picked up the plaque and ran her hands gently across the insignia and the name. Her home, and her crew's home as they journeyed towards home. The ship that had carried them, and even nurtured them, through every thing in the Delta Quadrant. It had been badly damaged and still it hadn't given up on them. It had been there, tried and true. And yet its symbol was lying in a pile of rubble. Kathryn thought back to all that the bridge had gone through before, even when she had returned after being forced to abandon the bridge, she couldn't remember having to do this.
"All these years, all these battles. This thing's never fallen down before."
Kathryn wasn't so engrossed that she didn't realize that the distance between her first officer and herself was as it used to be.
Chakotay had been watching the Captain as she was cleaning the plaque. So much that they shared was symbolized by that plaque. It symbolized the ship that was their home and had facilitated the journey he was destined to make. Living on Voyager for the last five years had defined home within him and had placed Kathryn at the heart of that home. He gently took the plaque from her and they both studied it as he too ran his hand against the words: USS Voyager. They felt solid under his fingers. The plaque had fallen but it hadn't been destroyed. The lettering was still there and he understood what that meant.
Did she?
"Let's put it back up where it belongs." Kathryn looked at him and Chakotay did not miss the look of surprise and horror on her face.
She understood.
He moved gently pass her and was positioning it on the wall. As he was about to affix it on its official hangers, he realized that Kathryn was not with him.
"Kathryn?"
"Perhaps, I should leave this in your capable hands Commander." Kathryn said softly.
There was silence between for just a moment as Chakotay looked at her pointedly.
"I can't do this alone Kathryn."
Anyone else just listening to the conversation would have found this strange, but Chakotay knew that Kathryn understood exactly what he was saying.
A fleeting look of gratitude crossed her face as she joined him.
Together they placed the plaque back in its rightful space.