Chapter 5. Confession

Chakotay took her to see the lake, almost a straight shot out the back door. They walked past fields green with spring growth, and then along a path that curved through a small sloping wood. He'd never learned how the wood had escaped the devastating Cardassian attacks a generation prior. It gave way onto a meadow of hip-high grasses and wildflowers - blue and violet now, after the pink and yellow ones of springtime. Beyond this idyll lay the lake, shimmering blue in the sunlight, with another strip of green just visible on the far shore, beneath an equally blue sky.

"Wow." B'Elanna stopped to take it in. The breeze in her rich brown hair made her look younger, more free, and the walk and sunshine had brought an appealingly rosy glow to her face. "You forget, on a space station, that there are places like this."

He smiled proudly, filling his lungs with the fresh living air. "There is no place like this."

She swatted his arm and rolled her eyes. "There are other planets with meadows and woods and lakes, Chakotay."

"Yes, that is true," he conceded the point, knowing his tone was still smug. "But my people worked hard to bring this ecosystem back to life after the war. I'll brag a little."

She inclined her head to show respect.

Overlooking the rocky shore of the lake, they sat for a bit, and the mood grew pensive. Chakotay had the opportunity to study B'Elanna's profile as she gazed out over the water. The troubled, distant expression of last night returned to her features, her thoughts clearly many light-years away.

When her eyes welled with tears, he broke the silence. "I've been selfish, B'Elanna. I should have asked last night. What's going on with you and Tom?" A longing in her eyes made him feel she wanted to unburden herself. Still, when she opened her mouth to reply, to tell him, she found no words. That bad? he thought. She looked down, swallowed, and visibly steeled her nerve.

"We're splitting up, Chakotay. Most likely." Her fingers drummed against her knee until she made herself reach down, pick up a pebble, study it. Then she seemed to realize what her refusal to meet his eyes might look like, and she abruptly looked up and directly at him. "It's not what you're thinking," she said fiercely.

"What am I thinking?" he answered, patient tone covering an immediate suspicion.

"That he cheated on me. That someone younger and prettier caught his eye and he - " she snapped her fingers. "Up and went."

"OK, first, there could be no one prettier than you." She scowled at the compliment, though her cheeks grew pink again. "But you're saying that's not what happened," he added, inviting her to continue.

"No. It's not."

He waited.

"Miral left home." Pain swelled through her body and crested on her face with a dark grimace.

"Yes, for the Academy. And?"

"And, nothing. That's what happened. To me and Tom. We raised our child and now we're done. We're just … done." Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact. Like she was explaining something basic. Like she was trying to convince herself this loss had been inevitable.

He pondered that for a minute. She tossed the pebble away, then picked up a stone of a different shape and color and twirled it through her fingers.

"You'll have to forgive me, B'Elanna, for being so obtuse, but I don't understand." She looked at him sidelong, as if suspecting him of teasing her.

"What is there to understand?" Her voice found an edge and balanced there.

"What raising a child has to do with being married." He spoke grimly, trusting her to know he referenced his own abandoned dream, a grief far older than the one he now wore as a blue dragonfly on his chest.

She knew. It seemed to make her angry. "Well, I'm sorry," she said bitterly, "that I can't explain it better. But that's how it is for us." She propelled herself upward and took a few steps forward, crunching towards the edge of the lake. Suddenly she hauled her arm back and threw the stone as far away as she could, releasing a high-pitched grunt of effort, of protest. She didn't stand to watch it splash into the water, but turned and started back for the house.

He didn't follow, and she didn't wait.