Stranger at My Side
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
The very first Voyager story I ever wrote, way back during first season, when the two crews were still largely strangers to one another. On learning that Chakotay is troubled over Seska's betrayal, Janeway makes up her mind to help him. But how can she comfort a man she barely knows? A story about the possible beginnings of a friendship. Thanks to Nancy Borden for dialogue assistance, and to Diane Bellomo for betaing.
Kes faced Kathryn Janeway over the short expanse of the Terran woman's desk, the Ocampa's blue eyes, as always, wide and honest. "Captain, I think you should know there's an officer on this ship who needs to speak to you."
"Who's that, Kes?" the captain asked briskly, wondering if the Ocampa woman had again come to intercede on behalf of her teacher and boss, the ship's holographic doctor. Well, Kes rarely made frivolous remarks or requests, and she'd generally been quite accurate in her assessment of the Doctor's needs, so Janeway was inclined to listen when she spoke. "Is there something else we can get for the Doctor?"
"No, the Doctor's doing very well." Kes smiled. "He'll be happy to know you were concerned."
"Well, that's fine." Janeway smiled back. "So who is it who needs to talk to me?"
"It's Commander Chakotay."
"Commander Chakotay?" Janeway felt her mouth open in surprise. It was extremely unlike Chakotay to enlist a mediator in approaching the captain. While Voyager's new first officer might be a private man, he was neither shy nor wary of speaking his mind, and he had discretion enough to realize the hazards of thus showing a rift in the command staff. "If Commander Chakotay needs anything, he knows he can come to me himself," she said, a little sharply. Doesn't he?
As if answering the unspoken question, Kes said, "Actually, Captain, I don't think he does."
"Well, there's no reason he shouldn't." Or did the former Maquis leader think the recent crimes committed by Seska, a member of his old crew and a woman Chakotay had apparently cared for, had somehow affected his own status? Absurd. Although he had not wanted to believe Seska's guilt, Chakotay himself had spearheaded the investigation that proved it had been she who'd traded Federation technology to the Kazon-Nistrim. His actions in the entire matter had been beyond reproach. "What did the commander say he wanted to discuss with me?" she asked finally.
Kes looked startled. "Actually, he didn't say anything to me."
"What?" Janeway was completely puzzled. "Then what leads you to believe...?" She trailed off, waiting.
"Because he's upset," Kes answered.
"I'm sure he is." Though he was too stolid, too steady, to confess it before Janeway or the crew, Chakotay would have been less than human if he hadn't succumbed to pain at the betrayal of one of his own trusted people. "But what makes you think he'd want --"
Kes cut her off. "He cared a lot about Seska, Captain."
"I thought there must be an attachment," Janeway said thoughtfully.
"It was more than an attachment.'" The alien woman was quite definite. "Do you know where he was after Seska was injured, manipulating the subspace fields on the Kazon-Nistrim ship?"
"No." As Janeway remembered, the first officer had left the bridge abruptly, without naming his destination.
"He was in Sickbay, Captain. He was holding Seska's hand, until the Doctor told him to move back."
Not for the first time, Janeway was struck by how very gentle Kes's eyes were.
"The Doctor started to tell the commander to leave," Kes added. "But I talked the Doctor into letting him stay. The commander watched the whole treatment. When we were finished, he came over to her bed. She was still sleeping, but he kissed her on the cheek before he left." In her time on Voyager, Kes had learned about human gestures of affection.
"Oh, dear," Janeway murmured, appalled. In her last dialogue with Chakotay, Seska admitted she had loved him, and the passion with which Chakotay had earlier defended Seska's innocence had suggested he might be partial to that young woman as well. But Janeway'd had no way of knowing how completely the man had reciprocated Seska's professed affections. "I'm sorry. That must be difficult for him to deal with."
"I think so," the Ocampa agreed. "You know, Neelix hasn't seen him eating in the dining hall in the three days since Seska left."
"No?" the captain said thoughtfully. As nearly as she could tell, Chakotay's opinion of Neelix's cooking was no higher than Janeway's own, but, like her, the first officer ate in the dining hall once, sometimes twice, a day to set an example for the rest of the crew. "I didn't know that."
"And I haven't seen him in any of the lounges, even though he and I have been working a lot of the same shifts. From what I hear," Kes continued, "neither has anyone else."
"That's not good."
"Everyone seems to agree that he needs someone to talk to."
Janeway nodded. "I think they're probably right."
Kes' eyebrows rose, hopefully. "So you'll talk to him, then?"
"Kes." Janeway said it with some regret. "I don't think the commander wants to talk to me. We're...not close." That's an understatement, she thought. Though Janeway questioned Chakotay's abilities no more than he questioned hers (not at all), though his loyalty in their present situation couldn't be doubted, though he and she had made occasional tentative gestures toward getting to know each other, the first officer's mind was still essentially opaque to Janeway. She doubted he understood hers much better. "Surely there must be someone else on the ship. Perhaps someone from his old crew," the captain suggested.
"Lieutenant Torres said she tried, Captain," Kes offered. Janeway nodded, knowing that the engineer was one of Chakotay's closest friends. "But she said he wouldn't listen to her."
"If he wouldn't listen to her, what makes you think he'll listen to me?" Janeway was genuinely puzzled.
Kes hesitated for a moment, as if fumbling for words. "He seems to respect you, Captain. I've noticed the way he pays attention to you."
"About the ship and the mission, yes. But he's never given me leave to talk to him about his personal life, Kes." Janeway doubted the self-possessed man of the Maquis gave many such leave. "I can't simply begin now."
"Then when?"
"I beg your pardon?" Janeway asked uncertainly.
"Captain, the man needs help," Kes said earnestly. "He's your officer, part of your crew. I thought you agreed to work together. If he needs help, and there's no one else who can help him, don't you owe it to him to try?"
Janeway paused for a moment, considering. Kes had a point: Janeway did owe Chakotay something for his efforts and his loyalty. If nothing else, she owed him some expression of loyalty in return. This would be as good a time for that expression as any, she decided. Besides, close or not, Janeway didn't like the thought of this man suffering for something that wasn't his fault. She didn't have to know him well to know that he deserved better than that.
"All right, Kes. I'll try."
The captain glanced covertly at her second-in-command. Chakotay sat at his usual station, but he was motionless, his expression set as if in stone.
Janeway thought of how seldom she'd heard him speak of anything other than duty, these last few days.
She thought of how the light seemed to have fled his eyes.
She thought of how long it had been since she'd seen him smile.
And she thought that she really had no choice. This evening, when they were both off-duty, she would have to speak with him. She'd have to see what she could do to help him.
According to the computer, Chakotay had gone to Holodeck Two within a half-hour of having gone off-shift. Janeway stood before the holodeck entrance, reconsidering her strategy. Strategy? she asked herself wryly. I want to talk to him -- not defeat him in battle. However, she suspected the former might take as much adroitness as the latter, at least for her.
"We're not close," she'd said earlier. As an understatement, it was almost extreme enough to be a joke. I don't know him at all. Chakotay's Starfleet service records, Tuvok's reports on his work with the Maquis, some private conferences (several of them heated), and a few hours he and she had spent over various meals discussing ship's problems and exchanging near-ritual courtesies -- those were all Janeway had of the man now serving as her second. While she would have known his style in an instant, in a first-contact situation or a contest with a Cardassian warship, she hadn't had a guess as to how he dealt with love and betrayal.
I didn't even know that's what he is dealing with. The realization disturbed Janeway. Chakotay was her second-in-command, her sworn (and necessary) ally, the sword at her back, and she couldn't read him in that basic a fashion.
Half the ship would probably have been better qualified to help this man than was Kathryn Janeway.
Half the ship wasn't volunteering. The one person who had tried had failed.
Well, I can't do worse than that. "Computer," she said finally, "admit me to the program in progress."
The holodeck doors opened onto a scene many humans would have taken for paradise: a field, overgrown, not entirely level, filled with a chaotic jumble of bright flowers and green leaves. It was split by a swift-moving creek that filled the central lake, and continued at its other side. The water's music, and the lively notes of birdsong, were the only sounds to be heard, and the earthy smell of growing things filled the air. Tall, broad-leaved trees girdled the sky.
Chakotay leaned against the nearest, dressed in the garments she knew he'd favored in his days as a Maquis captain: low boots, fitted slacks, a patched-leather vest, a dark heavy shirt horizontally striped with what Janeway could identify only as Native American patterns.
In a surprising lapse of his customary composure, he started visibly as she entered. "Captain? Is something wrong?"
"No." Janeway stepped further into the holodeck, allowing the arch to close. "Am I disturbing you?"
"No, no," he said, a bit too quickly. "Of course not."
"At ease, Commander." Janeway smiled, looking around with genuine admiration. "This is beautiful."
"I'd thank you if I'd created it." Chakotay's answering smile was guarded. "Since it's just a recreation, I can only say that I'm glad someone else appreciates it, too."
"Is it from your homeworld?"
"This is -- I should say it represents -- the Haranharok Valley, about half a kilometer from my village. When I was a boy, I thought it was one of the most beautiful places in the galaxy."
"And now?"
Chakotay shrugged, shifting a little on the balls of his feet. "I suppose I still do."
"There's no place like home." Janeway was all too conscious of the cliché, and of wishing, not for the first time, that like some latter-day Dorothy she could click her boot heels together and send herself and her people back to Alpha Quadrant.
"No." The sturdy man took her words at face value as he looked over her shoulder at the image that enveloped them. "There never could be."
They stood silent for a moment, in mutual sympathy.
Then Chakotay's gaze came back to her, focused and grave. "But surely you didn't come here to see my taste in holodeck scenarios."
"No." Although she was grateful for the brief understanding this scene had created between the two of them... She matched his seriousness with her own. "I came here because I've been worried about you, Commander."
His chin jerked back, his eyes widening. "Worried about me?" The line of his mouth tightened. "Why?"
The defensiveness surprised her. Was the distance between them still so great that he should be that suspicious of her motives? "It's not an accusation, Commander," she said, more sharply than she'd intended.
Chakotay's posture relaxed fractionally, but his face didn't change. "What, then?"
"It's an expression of concern." She modulated her tone as she looked up intoenigmatic eyes that were dark even in the brilliance of artificial sunshine. "Concern for you."
The eyes were more opaque than before, if that were possible. "Again, why?"
"You've seemed -- withdrawn, these last couple of days. Is something wrong, Commander?"
He looked at her hard for a moment, then a short, humorless bark of laughter burst from his lips. "Three days ago, one of my people admitted to treason, Captain. What could possibly be wrong?"
"I see," Janeway said. And she did: she saw how right Kes had been, and how deeply disturbed this man was. No one erected such formidable defenses for no reason. "I'd thought it must have something to do with Ensign Seska."
Something flared in the Native American's eyes, and he paced off a few steps, then stopped and looked over his shoulder at Janeway. "I owe you an apology, Captain."
He was unreadable, and his comment surprised her. "Why?"
"If it hadn't been for my error in judgment, Ensign Seska would never have been in a position to harm us."
The sometimes warm, often-musical voice was cool and near-toneless as Janeway had rarely heard it. She waited for him to continue.
"Back in the Alpha Quadrant, it was I who accepted Seska as a member of my crew, and it was because of that, that she later became part of our combined crew." He turned back toward Janeway. "If I'd been able to recognize her for what she was while we were still back in Alpha space," and his hands balled into fists, "she would never have come into the Delta Quadrant, or aboard Voyager. She would never have had access to Voyager's unique technology, and she would never have been able to trade it to an enemy who threatens not only us, but most of the people in this sector."
"Commander, are you telling me you think that what Ensign Seska did was your fault?"
"Not what she did, but that she was able to do it. Yes."
Janeway took the few steps needed to close the distance between them, planted her fists on her hips, and looked squarely up at her first officer. "Nonsense. Do you think I hold you personally responsible for the conduct of every Maquis officer on this ship, Commander?"
"Directly or indirectly," he said evenly, "yes. And you should."
"No, I shouldn't. And I don't," she said strongly. "Seska is a free agent, Commander, especially here in the Delta Quadrant. Whoever she reports to back home, here she didn't answer to anyone but you and me." You may be sure, the captain added mentally, grimly, that someday she'll answer to us again. For what she's done with the Kazon-Nistrim, and for what she's done to you. Janeway had been, still was, furious over Seska's crimes. Seeing the pain they'd brought this proud man standing before her made the captain angrier still. "As far as I'm concerned, Commander, what she did was her responsibility, and hers alone."
His face conceded nothing. "If you say so, Captain."
"I do, Commander. And I refuse your apology." Janeway paused, deliberately relaxing her stance. "Actually, I should thank you."
He looked back, grave. "Thank me?" he said, tonelessly.
"For helping us identify Seska as the traitor."
His lips jerked back, his eyes averted, in motions that Janeway read as a wince. They passed so quickly that she would never have seen them had she not been studying his face. "You don't need to thank me for doing my duty, Captain." His voice was absolutely even.
"I think I do, when it was this difficult."
"No," he replied. "Difficult duties come with the uniform, just as they taught us at the Academy." Perhaps despite himself, he sighed.
As difficult as getting inside your shell? Janeway sighed as well. "They never told us how difficult."
"True. They never told you that someday you might find yourself commanding a starship 70,000 light-years away from home."
He'd sidestepped her remark with the adroitness of a master, but this time she was ready for him. "Or that someday you might have to collect the evidence that indicts someone you love for treason," she said softly.
Chakotay's shoulders tightened in a spasm as he sucked in a sudden breath, and his eyes closed momentarily. When he opened them again, he was not looking at Janeway. "Who told you? Torres?" Though his voice was still low, still mostly controlled, she heard the emotion in it now, a hoarseness like the aftermath of long-ago tears.
She couldn't, wouldn't, mention Kes's name to him in this context. If the commander's pride had kept him from speaking the truth this long, he wouldn't be soothed by the news that others were aware of his pain -- especially others outside the close circle of his friends. Besides, the captain realized, she had known the truth herself (at least at some level) all along.
"I saw," she said simply. She had indeed, even though she'd been too infuriated at the time to recognize the significance of Chakotay's expression when Seska'd sat before them in Sickbay, revealed and finally confessed. ("You're a fool," the false Bajoran, false Maquis had told Janeway, her blue eyes snapping with rage. Then, to Chakotay, "And you're a fool to follow her." The man's look had been that of an animal that had been kicked.) "I was there the last time you spoke to her, Commander."
Chakotay sighed, one big hand gripping the other behind his back. "I never realized I was so transparent." His brown eyes fixed on the holographic horizon. "Now the whole ship must know what an idiot I've been."
Janeway's impulse was to clasp Chakotay's shoulder in support and solidarity, and, had she known the man better, she would have done precisely that. As matters were, she didn't know if he would find the gesture soothing, or perceive it as intrusive. She gave him her words instead. "No. They didn't see you then. But if they had, Chakotay, I don't think they would've thought less of you. There's no shame in caring about someone."
"No. The shame is in being blind to who -- or what -- that someone is." He stepped away again, rebuilding the distance between himself and the captain, standing with his back to her. "The shame's having given your heart, your seed, and your soul to someone, and then discovering she's a complete stranger." His voice tightened. "My gods...how could I been so close to her and known her so little?"
"No one can see everything, Chakotay," she said quietly. "When you were in Alpha, you had a ship to look out for." In Chakotay's and her own home quadrant, Kathryn Janeway, having sworn to uphold a hard-won Federation-Cardassian peace treaty, had not supported that ship or the guerilla movement it served. Quite the opposite; in those days, the only place this Maquis leader would have had on her ship would have been in its brig. But she knew the demands on a ship's captain as well as any line commander would, and she could guess how much more difficult meeting those requirements must have been in a fleet with superannuated equipment and no standard training regimen. Chakotay would have had little time, energy, or attention to spare for anything beyond the needs of his command. In fact, Janeway was a little surprised he had managed to have a love affair at all. "All she had to look out for was you. Since then -- well, we've all kept busy, haven't we? And until now, she hadn't done anything --"
"I'm not talking about seeing what she did," he said, a little harshly. "I'm talking about seeing what she was."
"What she was, was trained for the sole purpose of deceiving you and your crew. How could you have known?"
"I should have known."
"How?"
"I should have known," he repeated.
"Even Tuvok didn't know."
"He didn't examine her at the range I did, now did he?" Chakotay's arms untangled from behind his back, recrossing in front of him. In all this time, he had still not looked at his commanding officer. "But even that isn't the worst of it, Captain."
"No?"
"The worst of it is, in some ways I'm sorry I learned the truth about Seska." He managed a short, sharp, unconvincing laugh. "As much as I hate having been deceived, I think I'd rather have kept my illusion: the beautiful Bajoran who loved me..." After a moment, he went on. "We're, all of us, so far away from our own people here. It's as she said to me, not very long ago: there aren't a lot of potential mates in this quadrant."
Oh God, Chakotay...Janeway thought, appalled. Seska had entangled her prey as completely as a Terran spider would have its, in a web woven of need and hope and loneliness.
"We hadn't been lovers for months now, but still, I'd loved her for a long time. I suppose that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I'd have the chance to love her again; that if I claimed a partner, it would be her. Now --" His shoulders lifted and fell. "There's no one. Foolish, I know."
"Human," she corrected quietly.
"Human to miss someone, knowing that she existed to betray you?" he murmured.
Janeway heard the bitterness in his tones. "Human to regret."
A soft snort, as of self-mockery. "Then I must be incredibly human."
"There's no disgrace in that, Chakotay."
"No?" He looked up toward the artificial sky, and she saw how taut his face was. "Do you know the final irony, Captain?" His lips quirked up into a tight, ghastly smile. "The last time we ended up in the Badlands -- when we were pulled here -- Seska wasn't supposed to be on my ship. Before we went on that mission, I'd asked the unit commander to reassign her to another vessel, because I didn't want my crew seeing that there was anyone on the ship I was partial to. But the timing of the mission was critical, and he couldn't find me a replacement quickly enough. Trained engineers, even assistants like Seska, are hard to come by in the Maquis, but if another had been available --"
"Seska would never have come to the Delta Quadrant at all, would she?"
"No. Apparently that would have been no favor to the Maquis, but -- at least here and now -- I would never have had to know what she was." His arms hugged across his chest a little closer. "I would have had her memory. Selfish of me, I suppose."
"No." Though Janeway could have told her companion what a mixed blessing memories were, (Mark's eyes alight with tenderness as his fingers traced her cheek) when they were all you had of your lover, she knew she'd never willingly give up her own recollections. Seska's treachery, and Chakotay's knowledge of it, had robbed this man of even that bleak choice. "You deserved to have the memory, at least." Anyone deserves that much.
"It seems that fate and my lover didn't agree."
The two officers stood silently together for a time, the same warm breeze drifting over both, and Janeway wished she had more comfort to give him.
Eventually, Chakotay turned his head to look at his captain. The dark eyes that had been so opaque seemed more open now, more honest, and the words he spoke were straightforward and direct. "It's my own mistakes I'm grieving for, Captain. I don't want your pity."
"I don't agree with your assessment," she told him, blunt as he. "As little as I know you, Chakotay, I know you're an ethical man." Knowing now how he felt about the woman he'd tried to bring to justice, Janeway was more convinced of that than ever. "You didn't deserve to be used that way. You can't blame yourself for reacting like a living, feeling being. And you're wrong about something else, too." She closed the space between them with a few steps. "It's not pity, dammit. It's sympathy."
"I don't want --" He hesitated, looking away again.
"I don't care. You've got it anyway."
There was another silence, this one so long that she thought she'd lost him to his thoughts and memories and pain. Then he offered her two words, quiet and sincere. "Thank you." After a moment, he continued,
"I didn't think -- didn't expect..." The words trailed off.
Me to care? Something tightened in Janeway's throat as she thought of how close she'd come to leaving this man alone, to not even seeing that he needed human contact, someone to understand what he was enduring. "You're welcome," she managed at last. "I hope it helps."
"It helps."
She stood with him for a while, saying nothing, simply being there. Incongruously cheerful birdsong filled their ears as the warmth of the artificial sun beat down on them both.
Once again, it was he who broke their shared silence. "If you don't mind," and the look he gave her was almost apologetic, "I do need to be alone for a while."
"I think you've been alone too much," the captain said softly. "But then, we've all been alone too much." She took his hand in her own, clasping it tightly.
"Agreed," he whispered, fingers closing over hers. "But I need -- time, Captain."
"Yes...yes, of course you do." With a final squeeze, she released his hand. "Take all the time you need, Chakotay. In fact," and she sketched a rueful smile, realizing that she would actually miss his silent, solid support for the period she was granting him, "I believe that we can probably manage for a day or two without your presence on the bridge. If you'd prefer that."
"I -- yes. Thank you. I would. That should be enough."
"Don't rush yourself, Commander," she told him sternly. "As far as I'm concerned, barring emergencies you can take whatever time you need. But I want a favor in exchange."
He looked at her, uncomprehending. "And that is?"
"The next time something's bothering you this badly, I'd like you to consider telling me about it. I know we haven't exactly been confidants, and maybe," she added frankly, "we never will be. But you are my first officer, and I rely on you -- for your knowledge, your ability, and your sense of duty. I'd like you to feel you can rely on me, too."
He gave her just the shadow of a smile, the first authentic one she'd seen from him since before the Kazon-Nistrim incident had begun. "I'll keep that in mind, Captain."
"Good." She called for the arch, and obligingly it appeared. "Until I see you again, Commander. Take care."
"And you, Captain."
She was stepping through the exit when she heard his next words, spoken softly enough that she wasn't sure she was meant to hear them at all. "Thank you for coming to me."
Only after the arch had closed behind her did she murmur a reply. "Thank you for letting me in."
END