Winter's Child, continued.
Tom let me sit in silence for several minutes more, but when he saw the way I was shivering and felt my icy hands he stood me up. "Enough," he said, breathing warm air on my fingers before pulling me to my feet. We slid out into the corridor, I trailing the heavy blanket behind me, and Tom led the way back towards the bridge. We had hardly rounded the next bend when we came face to face with my mother.
She was anxious; her hands were twisting together, and she was walking slowly through the plants, her lips pressed tight. In the crook of her arm she carried my coat, so she had been looking for me. I stopped dead, and Tom let his hand fall from my shoulder. "Kathryn," he said softly, nodding at her, and squeezed past both of us. He left us there, face to face in the silent corridor, and she didn't speak until his footsteps had faded in the distance.
"Beatrice," she said, and fumbled with the coat. I dropped the blanket and let her help me into it; it was cold. She fished in her pocket and brought out a scarf, which she wrapped around my head, knotting it beneath my chin with fumbling fingers. "Beatrice, I'm sorry."
I bent down to pick up the blanket. "I know." Together, we folded it in half, and she tentatively draped it across her shoulders, holding out the other end for me. I slipped in beside her, and she wrapped a thin, wiry arm around my waist.
"The thing is – and this isn't an excuse, but – " She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Your father," and her voice caught on the word, "and I never had the chance to – to talk about what happened between us. I didn't know how to tell you about him, to tell you what he meant to me, and to tell the truth about what it was like for us on Voyager. I didn't want to lie to you, to pretend that your father and I had what Tom and B'Elanna have, so I – "
"Left him out," I said. We began to walk back toward the bridge, the long way. "It would've been hard, explaining love and Starfleet to a little kid."
"Starfleet?" She said, her voice less tentative. "What did Tom say? Actually," she added, and I was reassured to hear the hint of a chuckle in her voice, "I don't want to know." She reached out to pluck a leaf from one of the bean plants as we passed. "I suppose he's right," she said, and she crushed the leaf between her fingers. "Starfleet did have a lot to do with it."
I snaked my arm around her waist, too. "I'm sorry I ran away," I said, feeling very foolish as I did. "I just didn't know what else to do."
"Oh, Bea, I know why you did. You're so grown up all the time that I forget that you're only fourteen." She sighed. "It was a lot to ask, that you sit there with the father you'd never been told about while your mother had a temper tantrum."
We walked on in silence for a few moments. I marveled that my mother had been forced to confront her deepest secret and could describe it as a 'tantrum;' that wasn't what I would have said, at all. But I felt her arm shaking against me, and I knew she wasn't as calm as she pretended. As we neared the edge of the garden, I finally asked, "Mama, did you… did you tell him?"
She drew in a quick breath, but before she could answer, another voice said, "No." We both jumped, and turned to look down the corridor ahead of us. Beyond the last plants, the modified lighting ended, and the corridor was as dim as all the ones below decks; Chakotay stood about ten meters away, fading into the frosty darkness in his environmental suit. We just stared at him.
"I came to find you," he said unnecessarily, and my mother dropped her end of the blanket and began to pace back and forth in the narrow space between the cargo containers. Chakotay watched her for a moment, then said, "This is quite impressive. I take it this is how you kept everyone fed?" He was so still, his expression so controlled. He was waiting.
"Yes," I said after a pause. Were we really going to chat about the garden? "We adjusted the lights to produce the full spectrum, and there's a bicycle dynamo in one of the junctions we use to keep them charged." I turned back toward my mother, pulling at the trailing end of the blanket; she was coiled so tightly. Had she imagined this conversation, rehearsed it in the lonely hours running the dynamo, whispered it to the dead? Or had it seemed too absurd?
If she had, I was sure she had never imagined him talking about agriculture while she wore a hole in the floor. "How do you deal with mineral depletion in the soil?"
"Um." I looked over at him, but he was still watching her. I didn't know what to do except answer. "The glacial water has a low concentration of most vital ionic and mineral compounds, so we filter for that, and Eddie designed a waste processor to replenish the organic and nitrogenous material the plants need."
"Interesting." It wasn't really, but he cast around for another question. "And how – "
"Chakotay," she interrupted, "this is ridiculous." I was relieved to hear her no-nonsense tone; the world was upside down, but she was still my mother. "You both know the truth. You don't care about the garden, Chakotay, and Bea never really has either."
He let his arms drop to his sides. "Let me guess, Kathryn: she prefers quantum mechanics."
My mother blushed, but didn't rise to the bait. "Chakotay, this is Bea, Beatrice Teya Janeway."
He might have known, but he hadn't believed in until just then. All the tension let go: his face relaxed, his shoulders dropped, his hands unclenched. "Kathryn, I – "
"Before you apologize for anything, Chakotay," she said, taking another step forward and reaching up to his shoulder, "Stop. You couldn't have been here, and you never would have left me – and any –" she glanced at me, then continued, "any birth control was as much my responsibility as – and regardless," she pushed on, despite the hint of a smile on his face, "she has been a joy."
Still, he didn't say anything. My mother took a deep breath, and when she glanced at me I knew immediately that she wished she could say this to him privately. I cast my eyes to the floor. "I don't know what that last night meant to you, Chakotay," she said, so quietly I had to strain my ears, and she raised her hand to his cheek. "I've thought about it for the last fifteen years. It could have been hope, but just as easily, fear; were we finishing what began on New Earth, or continuing it, or was it something else entirely? Was it love, or was it sex? I couldn't know what it meant to you, and so I couldn't know what Bea would mean to you." She let her hand slip down to his chest, bracing herself. "To me, she was the – the proof, Chakotay, of all those years. The trials we endured, and all the trust we shared. And more, of course. A child is more than her mother understands her to be."
"And to you, Kathryn? What was that night to you?"
She exhaled, but before she could answer, the chirp of a communicator interrupted. He fumbled with it, revealing his agitation, and said a little breathlessly, "Yes?"
"Dammit, Chakotay, what's going on down there? Have you found the Doctor and Seven of Nine?" The voice was female and impatient.
"Tessa," he said, then stopped. His eyes traveled from my mother's face to the lush greenery around him, from the icicles on the ceiling to me. "It's a little more complicated than we anticipated. There are – "
"Was the ship looted? I knew – "
"No, nothing like that. There are survivors."
I could almost hear her breathing over the channel. When she spoke, her brash, smooth tone was gone. "Who, Chakotay?"
"About ten of the crew, and – and their children. Look, I can't – I'll talk to you soon, Tess. I don't know what we're going to do, yet. Chakotay out." He cut the signal, and looked up at my mother. "Tessa has been helping us find Voyager." My mother pursed her lips and waited. "This is a conversation we can have later, Kathryn. It's freezing down here."
"It is; I'm sorry," she said, sincerely, turning back toward the garden. "I'd forgotten that it could be anything else." He jogged to catch up with her. "But please understand: I've been raising a child on a dead ship for fifteen years, Chakotay. I don't have much patience with later. If you want to tell me that you're sleeping with her, or even in love with her, I won't be surprised."
"Kathryn, I – "
"It's in her voice," she said, still looking straight ahead, walking as fast as dignity and layers of skirts let her. "I spent too long loving you not to recognize it."
He stopped dead, and I almost ran into him. "Loving me?" He almost whispered it, and she slowed, as though suddenly realizing what she'd said. "Dammit, Kathryn. I wasn't supposed to say that out loud."
She turned. "Neither was I."
"This is going to sound so childish. Did you mean it?"
Hand on her hip, she let a crooked smile sneak across her face. "I thought that was obvious when I didn't let you leave that night."
"You said it yourself. It could have been fear or hope, sex or love. I didn't know then, but it seemed rude to ask for clarification when you'd finally invited me in. And if you hadn't meant it…"
"You didn't want to know." She spun on her heel and began to walk towards the bridge again, more slowly this time. "I meant it. But that was fifteen years ago, Chakotay, don't be afraid to tell me you've moved on."
"My heart is here," he called after her, and he sounded so tired. "Please, Kathryn."
She didn't stop, and I realized suddenly that she was afraid. If he didn't love her, if he were alive and didn't love her, then what she had held inside was just the fevered dream of a lonely, lovesick woman. But as he ran after her, I saw what she couldn't see: that he was afraid, too.
"Kathryn, please," he said again, "please. I died when I lost you." She stopped then, her back to him. "I thought you were gone, and my heart just stopped beating. It's been like - like living without my heart. My soul." Her shoulders sagged and she turned almost imperceptibly to listen. He pressed his advantage. "Tess – she thinks that – she thinks she knows me, but she doesn't realize how much I left here." He walked toward her, slowly, his eyes fixed on narrow crescent of her face that he could see. "I never could have - Kathryn, I thought I'd find your body frozen, untouched by the last fifteen years, and I just hoped that your death had been quick, that you were whole, that I could remember you as you were."
"Well, you can't do that," she said, wryly. She turned toward him, blue eyes bright. "I'm sadder, and older, and altogether more wrinkled."
He closed the distance between them, and with tender uncertainty laid his broad palm over her cheek. "I'm so glad," he whispered, his voice breaking, and impossibly slowly leaned forward to kiss her.
The icy corridors seemed entirely different, afterward. There was a working ship in orbit, and my mother was kissing my father in empty hallways. The universe seemed bigger, and our corner of it less harsh and isolated; I wondered whether Harry and Chakotay's ship had replicators, sonic showers, holodecks. More importantly, I hoped for windows: I'd heard a lot about stars.
I wondered, too, about Tessa. She would be the first person we'd ever met who had nothing to do with the Delta Quadrant; she'd never been in a single story. It occurred to me that there were a lot of people in the universe who'd never made it into the stories, whole worlds of them. What would they be like?
If I'd had to guess, I'd have said that my mother and Chakotay hadn't even noticed my absence yet, but I didn't mind. I may have been Chakotay's daughter, but my mother had been his lover first, and she was real to him. I pried the doors open and squeezed onto the bridge; the rest of the crew waited there. Harry's environmental suit and the blue shoulders of the Doctor's uniform stood out among the all the muted grey as they all turned in unison at the screech of the door.
"Bea, where's Kathryn?" Maddie asked, looking puzzled, and I caught Tom's wink over her head.
"With Chakotay," I said, glancing around at the assembled adults. Tuvok had raised his eyebrow, and the Doctor looked a little ruffled. "My – my parents," I said, trying out the unfamiliar phrase, "are in the garden, getting reacquainted."
A moment of absolute silence followed; it was Tom who first began to laugh. B'Elanna bit her lip, trying to suppress her smile, and Harry Kim stared at the two of them in shock. "You mean – "
"Weren't you paying attention, Harry?" B'Elanna said with a smirk. "Bea was conceived before the crash, remember?" Madelein and Joe had dissolved too, and Eddie was grinning.I knew them well enough to know that they weren't laughing out of malice or ridicule, but that they were so happy, so relieved: they had been rescued, and their captain had finally stopped punishing herself, even if just for the length of a kiss.
"But – not – " He looked helplessly around the bridge. I caught a glimpse of the man he might have been the last time he had stood here, the green, upstanding ensign from Tom's stories.
"Yes," Tom said, "and thank God. Though I hope," he added wickedly, throwing his arms around his wife's shoulders as she shook with silent laughter, "that they have the sense to keep their clothes on. It's cold down here."
Note: I've given this crew an awfully hard time... I owed them at least one moment of bliss before the end.