Star Trek Voyager characters are the property of Paramount Pictures

THE LOST YEARS
(R)

CHAPTER THREE

With a cold glass of water in her hands, Kathryn walked over from the suite's replicator to rejoin Chakotay on the couch. They had spent a long time talking, or rather she had spent a long time talking, and had found herself telling him things that she hadn't thought about for years. It was almost as though she couldn't stop talking once she had started. Chakotay had listened, questioned at times and been reassuring at others, but now he was very quiet. He was sitting on the sofa in a rigid position, his face taut, and was staring at his hands. The pain in the expression tore at her heart. It was such a contrast to the dazzling happiness he had displayed only hours before.

"This isn't how I wanted it to be," Kathryn said, sitting beside him, "our wedding night. It's supposed to have been the happiest day of our lives and it's turned into one of the worst." She paused. "I should have thought I would react, but all I was thinking about was you and me and..." She paused again. "And it wasn't you. It wasn't you I reacted too. It was him. It was like he was there...like I was there...But it wasn't you..."

"I understand," Chakotay replied. "You had a flashback." He paused painfully. "But I was the cause of it, and I'm sorry. I only wanted to show you how much I love you, only wanted to bring you joy. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you."

Kathyn reached for his hand and squeezed it. "You didn't. You wouldn't. I trust you more than it's possible to trust. I know I'm safe with you. All those years on Voyager you showed me time and time again that you would die for me. I trust you with all my heart and soul...with all that I am." She paused tearfully. "And it was beautiful. The way you touched me, the way you kissed me, there was no comparison. You were so gentle, so tender, touching me as though I'm something sacred. He never...it was nothing the same. It wasn't you, it was me. One moment I was in heaven with you, and the next I was in hell with him..." She paused. "I didn't think I'd ever have to burden you with this. But I should have told you, let you come to terms with this before we married...if you had still wanted to marry me. I went about it all wrong. I'm sorry."

"Of course I would still have married you," Chakotay replied. "I love you. That's why this hurts so much."

Kathryn lowered her eyes. "I know. I know you love me. And I also know I don't deserve your love, not after the way I've always treated you. All I've ever done is bring pain into your life. I know I hurt you on Voyager by pushing you away all those years and now..." She paused. "I wanted you to be happy but when I found out you were seeing Seven, it was like my heart had been wrenched and sliced into a million pieces. I didn't know how to express my love for you, had never known that, with anyone, but I knew I felt it. I knew I loved you."

Chakotay put his hand on her shoulder. "You mustn't think that you've only ever caused me pain. You've brought immense joy into my life, Kathryn. I've never loved anyone as much as I love you and even though there were difficult times on Voyager, they were the happiest years of my life. It hurt to not be able to be with you, but I knew you cared for me, loved me even. It was there in your eyes, in your touch, in all the things you didn't say and do. Whenever I was sick or injured you would be there, whenever I was feeling down or discouraged you'd raise my spirits, and when I was feeling alone and lonely you'd keep me company. There are many different ways of expressing love and you made me feel loved and needed. I'd never felt that, never felt I belonged anywhere." He paused. "Letting go of the hope that I would one day be with you was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do, but I believed it had to be done. We'd been in the Delta Quadrant for years and were closer to home than ever. I'd hoped that as time went by you'd change your mind about not being able to have a relationship with a crewmember, but you never did. I had to accept that you never would and had to try and build a life for myself on Voyager without you." He paused. "But while Seven made me happy for a while, she wasn't you and there's no one for me but you, Kathryn." He took her hand in his again. "I just wish I had known about all this. I once told you that I wanted to make your burden lighter, and that goes for all your burdens, all your sorrows, all your pain."

"I've never told anyone," Kathryn said quietly. "Not even Justin or Mark. Justin had his own problems to deal with and Mark...that's another story."

Chakotay looked at Kathryn sadly. "You were never intimate with them, were you? I mean, you never consummated your relationship with either of them."

"No. But how did you...?"

"Because if this happened with me, it would have happened with them too and if had, maybe it wouldn't have happened now."

Those words didn't make as much sense as he had hoped but Kathryn seemed to understand his meaning. She got to her feet and wandered over to the window.

"I couldn't," she said quietly. "I wanted too, I wanted to be like other women, but I couldn't." She paused. "Justin wasn't like any other man I knew. He was so quiet, so focussed, so distant. I saw in him the same pain as I felt in myself...one wounded soul identifying another, maybe. I wanted to help him, wanted to help take away the pain I wanted someone to help take away from me. He'd had a difficult childhood and had been terribly tortured by the Cardassians. Physical intimacy was difficult for him. Other men who were interested in me would come on quite strong, but he was always very reserved. And I liked that. I liked how he liked me to set the pace." A tear ran down her cheek. "Maybe that was part of the attraction, I don't know, but I did love him. I loved him so very much." She paused. "I think he suspected that something had happened to me because he would ask me questions sometimes about my past that suggested he knew there was something, but he never asked directly. A part of me wanted to tell him and yet...and yet another part didn't. He started to take more and more of the initiative in our relationship and one night he asked me to stay over. I'd been expecting it because we'd been together for a long time, but when it happened I still panicked. I made some excuse about having to be somewhere in the morning and he let it be at that, didn't pressurize me at all. The following weekend he asked again and when I made up another excuse he started to get heavy...I mean with the questions. And the more he asked, the more frightened I got. We argued and I told him it was over between us because he clearly only wanted to sleep with me. The next day he came to see me and told me he was sorry for upsetting me and after telling me how much he loved me, he asked me to marry him." She paused painfully. "We planned to take a vacation the following weekend and consummate our relationship then, but two days after we were engaged, he was dead."

Chakotay got up from the sofa and joined her at the window. "What happened with Mark?"

It was a long moment before Kathryn answered. "We were never engaged. We'd been good friends for years, but we'd only just begun dating. I only said he was my fiancé because it made things easier on Voyager. If everyone thought I was engaged, no one would expect me to get involved with someone else. He was my safetynet in many ways. I think I even told you that once."

"You did," Chakotay replied. "After you received a letter from him telling you he'd married a woman he worked with."

Kathryn turned slowly to Chakotay. "I'm sorry I deceived you. I never meant it as a deception, it was just..it was just self-protection."

"I understand," Chakotay replied.

Kathryn lowered her eyes and continued fidgeting with her fingers. "The only other serious relationship I had was with Jaffen and my memories of what happened on Quarren are hazy." As more and more memories of her true existencehad returned, memories of her life on Quarren had faded. "According to the doctor we were sexually intimate, and I guess if we were living together we had to have been, but I can barely remember our apartment, let alone what we got up to in it." She paused. "He wanted to stay with me on Voyager, I can remember that, but I didn't want too. I wasn't myself when I fell in love with him and even though I couldn't remember then all about my past or that it was you I really loved, I suddenly wasn't as comfortable with him physically as I had been." She paused again and then looked up at Chakotay. "It's not midnight yet. The registrar should still be here. I think we should go and see her and ask for an annulment. We've only been married a few hours and I'm happy to take any exam to show our marriage hasn't been consummated."

Chakotay put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't want an annulment, Kathryn. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Kathryn turned away from him. "But this is so wrong...all of it. We've waited so long for the chance to be together and our wedding night should have been so special. Now it's all ruined. I want an annulment. I want us to start over."

"We can't keep on pressing the rewind and erase button in life when things don't go to plan," Chakotay tried to argue. "We're married now and I'm glad that we are. Knowing all this I'm even more glad that we are. I love you and I meant every one of the vows I made to you today. I couldn't mean them any more a second time."

"But it's spoiled, Chakotay," she cried, turning back to him. "Don't you understand? He's made it dark and ugly and dirty, just like he's made me..."

Chakotay seized her gently. "You're not dirty, Kathryn. You must never think that. You're..."

"I am," she protested, shaking herself from his grasp. "It's how he'smade me feel... how he's making me feel now. I could never wash him away. No matter how many baths or showers I took I could still smell him, always smell him. And now he's taken our wedding night from us too and I can't..."

She could say no more as she wept painfully.

Chakotay gathered her against him and held her tenderly. "Alright, Kathryn," he reassured her, "we'll go and see the registrar and get an annulment. Then, if you want, we can continue our vacation somewhere else and put this night behind us." He kissed her hair softly. "When you're ready, we can start thinking about another wedding."

Kathryn's tears ebbed at his words and she stood still in his arms, her own tight around him. "I'd like all that."

Chakotay kissed her again. "Then we'll do it."

END OF CHAPTER THREE