The end

"I don't know what to say," he said.

"It's okay," she replied, "I know what we are — and I know what we're not."

Lang Leav

CHAPTER 3

Tom was worried. No that's too mild. He was on edge, tense, anxious and getting to the point where the pecking words were fasting turning into flat-out panic. He was unsure what exactly was going on, but something told him that something terrible, something awful, just happened. The last month he has been observing the Captain, he usually did, but he has been distracted with Miral and had not been paying too close attention. Tonight when Kathryn walked into that ballroom, every single Tom Paris red alert had gone off.

Kathryn had never been a showboat. Yet she wore a dress that made him nearly swallow his tongue, and turned every male's attention to her. It was made of emerald green silk, and it flowed around her body like it was a living thing. She looked magnificent. When she turned around, and he saw her back, he heard a choking sound behind him and caught Chakotay sputtering on his drink, his eyes glued to her. The way the man looked at her, was like a physical touch. His eyes caught the Captains, and so the night commenced, watching the Captain escape and Chakotay give chase.

Tom had spent a lot of time around Kathryn Janeway, not just while being a member of her crew. With both their fathers being Admirals and friends, there was a certain amount of exposure to each other that could not be avoided. He had a lot of memories that were reserved under her name in his childhood, and he would say it is a fair assessment that he has learned after many years to 'read' the Captain. He wasn't always correct, but he could give a fair warning when needed.

He knew exactly when things were going to hell in a handbasket on away missions. She would suddenly become overly relaxed and almost motionless, and her voice…her voice took on this purring quality, vibrating sensuously up your spine, right until she told you in no uncertain terms to take a spacewalk without a suit.

He had seen her after her Father and Justin's accident. He had seen her; briefly. She had opened the door of her mother's house in Indiana when his family went over to give their condolences. He had seen what losing them had done to her. He still sees it reflected in her eyes every now and again. It was in the way she would dip her head, go completely motionless, and her eyes would go away to a place where the people you have loved and lost still live, vivid and alive, forever trapped in memory. It had changed her in ways that were difficult to explain, but she became more closed of, more reserved, more guarded especially around those she loved, an abstract canvas that didn't reveal too much detail.

She was a good poker player, he had lost enough credits to her to know that. Her ability to keep a straight face even when she was haemorrhaging to death on the inside is what got her the Captaincy of Voyager. Her intelligence, determination and her ability to just work herself into the ground, and then get back up and do it all again was part and parcel of the remarkable Captain she became.

She was loyal, she was compassionate, she was one of the best human beings he had ever met. She inspired people to greatness.

Kathryn Janeway was always busy, always on the move. The woman was perpetual activity in motion with the force of a hurricane that would motivate people to do the impossible. She was made of the kind of metal that had not even been discovered yet because it was that strong. She may bend, but she did not break.

But her face when she stepped into the light on the balcony just now…

There was a time with the Maquis, early on with them, when he was beamed down to a village on a settlers planet. The place had been decimated by the Cardassians. He and a team were sent down to look for survivors.

The things he saw there that day is etched onto his memory like acid on a steel canvas, nothing he did could erase the things he saw that day. He still had nightmares about it. He was the field medic on that day, and while he was making his way around a village that was still burning, the silence was eerie. The only sound was the fire. There where no calls for help. There was death everywhere. Women, children, and men. Death didn't distinguish in who it took or in the brutality in which it brought them to their end. This was war. The smell that permeated the air was rancid, brutal and metallic. Saturated in the blood of hundreds of people that where lying broken and forever silent.

It was the wailing from one of the houses that drew them. There was a young man, and he was cradling a woman who very obviously pregnant. Tom rushed forward to help, and when he pulled out the tricorder to scan them, the horrific injuries the woman had sustained during the attack was made clinically cold in a couple lines of computer code. The horror of what was playing out in front of them was simplified to a couple of words on an instrument.

She was beyond saving.

Even if they could beam her to a fully functioning sick bed, which they couldn't, nothing could be done to save her. Her vividly green eyes were locked on what could only be assumed was her life partner, one of her hands was gently curved over the swell of her abdomen.

"Jonas…" her voice was so quiet that it was almost missed by the man openly crying, desperately clutching at her. Her other hand gently came up with great effort to cup his face and turn it to her. Her eyes were wide and filled with so much love that it was like seeing a living entity starring out of them. Tom could see that she was well past the point of pain, she was just there, teetering off the knife edge of here and not. She gave him a smile so beautiful it took Tom's breath away, it was so achingly sad in its beauty, that it made his chest burn. She loved Jonas, and she loved that baby. A little one that would now never be born, forever cradled in its mother's womb. A little one that had already paved the way his mother would soon follow.

"Jonas." The inflection in her voice when she whispered his name before it got caught in a ragged breath, expressed more feeling in the single sound of his name than what she could ever convey. Jonas held her so tightly it would have been painful had she still been able to feel.

"Claire!" The sound of her name on his lips was like listening to the word agony made real. He was begging her not to leave him, he was telling her that he loved her. So many things said in a single word, not enough. It made all the hair stand up on Tom's body. He would never get this image out of his mind, a moment that was so private in its brutality, so final. Nothing he could do to save her, to protect them.

Her hands slowly slid to her sides. Her eyes were locked on Jonas, unblinking. One moment Claire was there, the next, there was just nothing. No life, no love.

Nothing.

Nobody can ever prepare you or explain to you fully that you can SEE when your loved one is no longer there. They just…leave, one moment its someone you love, and the next it is a shell of something that looked vaguely like a person that was your life. Like a light being flicked off in a room that is then left bare in it's darkened solitude. It had been the most heartbreakingly painful thing he had ever witnessed. Jonas never stopped looking at her eyes. He didn't look away for one moment like he was willing her back to his side by staring into her eyes. Finally, he blinked, he gently covered her eyes with his hands and closed them for the final time. Those bright eyes where forever dull now.

When that man finally looked up at Tom, the look on his face and eyes where like he had left with her. There was nothing in his eyes.

Nothing.

He had died with her, as surely as if his own injuries was too much to sustain life. The tricorder had told Tom that Jonas had minor injuries when he scanned him earlier, but what Tom saw in his face that day, communicated to him that this man was mortally injured. He would not come back from this, and he didn't. He merely laid down next to her, gently cradling her body with their child wrapped in between them, and closed his eyes.

There were no survivors in that village. Not one.

He had hoped to never ever see that again.

But when the Captain had stepped into the light…her eyes held nothing. Kathryn was no longer there. Her eyes were a blank slate, and the Captain was the only one there. When she took his arm, it was like he was staring at a stranger. She looked through him, not at him. For the first time, he understood how the Admiral came to be.

He finally understood. He knew that nothing they went through in seven years had broken this woman. But tonight she had laid down and died. He followed her to the exit as she made her way there, her fingers trembling slightly on his arm.

Right before they stepped out of the ballroom, his eyes caught Chakotay's face on the balcony and what he saw there scarred him like nothing the Delta Quadrant could throw at them. Because what he saw was death. She had said goodbye.

PS: hope you are enjoying it so far. I always felt like the emotions of what the crew experienced during those seven years and the depth of feeling between Chakotay and Kathryn was never fully explored. Please let me know if this is too much. I know it is angsty, very much so, but emotions are brutal and felt like giving two of my favourite characters the ability to FEEL it all. Do you think I am getting it right? Pls feel free to comment, I am still learning. Will post again soon.