Winter's Child, continued.
I took only the essays with me when I returned to my mother's quarters, and when I slid between the pale Starfleet-issue sheets I set them gently on the bedside table. My mother wrapped me in her arms and kissed my forehead, whispering only, "Stay warm, Bea," the same words she'd sent me to sleep with every night I could remember. She lingered in the doorway and I could tell that she had more to say, but she left the ritual intact, padding away without a word.
It had been a long day: I had woken that morning aboard Voyager, believing that the most exciting thing I'd do that day was confirm the physics of warp. Instead, I'd met my history and my future, and now I lay curled beneath a smooth new quilt on a ship moving steadily away from the only home I'd known. With my fingers, I reached out and touched the textured wall, the smooth polymer of the headboard; definitely not a Jefferies tube. The dark stretching above my head seemed vast, though the ceilings couldn't have been more than three meters, and I rolled over.
I wanted badly to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes worry nudged up against my eyelids. I could see the pity in LaForge's pale eyes, feel the tension in my mother's body as Chakotay kissed her goodbye, and more than anything else I could sense Zayek's lonely uncertainty a few rooms over. Much as I wanted to forget it, I played the scene out in my mind, wondering what I could have said.
When he had dropped it, neither of us had said a word, but I'm sure my shock spoke volumes. For a few minutes, it seemed like that little tangle of wires was the only thing in the world. Against the glowing deck plating, the green-grey steel looked sinister and out of place, but I could see where it would hook up to a tricorder, a power cell. Part of me had wanted to sweep it over the side of the chute, hope that it smashed below, but as I stared at it I couldn't resist figuring it out, naming the components and indicators, guessing their functions. It was irresistible: I reached and touched it, still warm from his pocket.
We had stayed like that for a long time, and when I couldn't discover any more about the device without taking it apart, I looked up at him. He had been my closest friend, and I could feel his wordless plea. He was on unfamiliar ground: uncertainty was something new for someone as measured and logical as he was, and he had been asking me to join at least in that uncomfortable indecision. Instead, I had swung myself down the ladder and into the next access tube I found.
I pulled the quilt up to my chin, scrunching my eyes against the need in his. I willed sleep to come, but though my muscles seemed to melt into the blankets with exhaustion my mind wouldn't stop. Everything was backward: logical Zayek was uncertain, and placid Naomi was angry. B'Elanna was crying, and I could only imagine Eddie, alone with his daughter, trying to reconcile her ambivalence with his own.
Around me, the ship hummed; I could hear the transfer relays, the murmur of voices in the quarters above and below, and the ever-present beat of the warp core through every console. Used to absolute silence, muffled by frost and deepened by fear, the sound was deafening to me. No matter how I buried my head beneath the blankets, I could feel the pulse of the ship around me, and when I opened my eyes the streaming stars were impossibly bright after sleeping in the close darkness of the Jefferies tubes.
And of course, I'd never slept by myself before. Though it was more than warm enough, I was used to the unruly tangle of my mother's limbs, her breath against the back of my neck as she held me close, the steady beat of her heart through her fingers. I stretched my legs out, feeling the edge of the bed with my toes, and met no barrier. It seemed remarkable to me that Phoebe's child – that every child in the Federation – went to sleep each night so alone. I could hear my mother's footsteps in the next room and hugged myself, imagining her arm snugly wrapped around my ribs to keep me warm.
Except that she didn't need to, not here. I was sweating inside the light sleepwear, and my bare toes poked out from under the blanket, seeking the slightly cooler air. The bed should have seemed like a luxury, after sharing a narrow mattress edged by insulated bulkheads, but it was stifling. I finally threw off the quilt, but that was no better: fourteen years' paranoia about frostbite and hypothermia made exposure just as unnerving.
I imagined Chakotay, alone on the hard bunk in the brig. Would he be released? Though I was well-versed in Federation law, thanks to interminable sessions with Tuvok, I had no sense of the environment that would push the security council to such harsh punishment. I could understand it – if everyone when around changing history when things went badly, things would get awfully messy – but still, the fact that Tessa, Harry, and Chakotay hadn't actually done anything nagged at me, and no less than the carefully controlled grief on my mother's face as they were led away. If he was sent to prison, it would be like losing him again: the kind of happy ending I wanted for her didn't jibe with occasional visits through force fields.
With a glance toward the door, I gave up sleep, reached out for the PADD on the table and with some fumbling retrieved the emergency light from the drawer. My mother had shown me where it was with a rueful grin; the only lights we'd ever had in our sleeping quarters before were the dim lights below the tube decking and the faint glow of the gel packs. Something with a power cell and an on switch seemed an impossible luxury, but I retrieved the quilt and slid underneath it to hide the light from my mother's wakeful eyes. After blinking several times at the steady brightness, I returned to the first chapter of Chakotay's work. It was strange: the captain he described was vibrant, brash, and while I knew my mother to be as intelligent and as determined, somehow she was painted with paler colors than the Kathryn Janeway that Chakotay wrote about so eloquently. Beside that eager young captain, my mother seemed faded and grey.
"It seemed an impossible compromise: asking rebels to put on the uniform of their enemy, and asking upstanding officers to work alongside those who had rejected the organization and ideals they held so dear. Any admiral would tell you it was insanity, and any cell leader would have rejected it out of hand. But feasibility has never fazed Kathryn Janeway. She saw what was best for her ship and new crew, both Starfleet and Maquis, and without hesitation pursued it.
"It was the first of many headstrong, unreasonable, and ultimately brilliant decisions that she made against my counsel. Looking back on it, I'm not sure what I thought the alternatives were – she could neither lock us all up nor let us go, as both spelled death for all of us. She could hardly run a civilian ship, as there was nothing we valued as payment, and in any case any attempt would have been met with cynicism and mistrust among the Maquis. No, she offered us the one thing we valued: her ideals, her hope, and her leadership. I accepted her offer and her uniform with trepidation, but I accepted. We all did.
"I've been asked the question a thousand times: what was it about Kathryn Janeway that we trusted? I can only respond that it wasn't trust, exactly. Rather, it was a deep respect that even the most jaded rebels couldn't quite shake, that this was a woman who kept her promises, a captain who valued her crewmen, and an ally worth having. The uniforms chafed and the ranks grated on our ears, but she was the captain. Years after her disappearance, she still is."
Two chapters later, my eyes ached from reading the bright print and the light throbbed at my temples, but when I switched it off and laid back against the pillow sleep was no closer. The ship still murmured around me and the stars still streaked by the windows; I was still alone. Though I wasn't cold, I wrapped the quilt around my shoulders and padded to the door. The carpet against my bare feet, the almost imperceptible circulation of life support, the prompt swish of the door – it all reminded me just how different everything was, and was going to be.
In the adjoining master bedroom, the crisp corners of the bed were undisturbed. I found my mother instead curled up on the couch, a PADD in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. In the loose sleepwear, with her hair beginning to fall out of its neat knot, she looked more like the mother I remembered. When she saw me, she unfolded her legs to make room for me and laid down the PADD. Her hands curled around the metallic mug, and I tucked my legs beneath me, breathing in the rich scent of the coffee and the fainter scent of her clean skin.
"Can't sleep?" she asked finally.
I didn't answer, just reached out to take the mug from her. The coffee was bitter, scalding, and I made a face. Her lips twisted in a smile. "I know," she said. "It's an acquired taste, and one I seem to have lost." She took the cup back and set it on the table. "All those years, imagining the perfect cup of coffee, and somehow Tom's jury-rigged replicator did a better job."
It wasn't how I had imagined it, either; nothing was. "At least there's chocolate," I pointed out. "And books."
"Yes," she said, seriously. "And sonic showers."
"It's nice to be clean, isn't it?" I hugged my knees as her blue eyes welled with tears. "I knew what all those things looked like and how they worked – replicators and computers and showers and everything – but I never really understood how easy everything was."
"We didn't either, Bea. Not until we lost it." She tossed the PADD down between us; in a glance I saw that she was composing letters. "Wait until you see the holodeck. Or when we get to Earth – we'll spend a whole day barefoot in the grass."
"In the sun?" I smiled at the thought of daylight, and glanced up at the lights set into the ceiling, wondering how much brighter the direct light of Earth's star would be.
"You've never seen sunshine," she whispered; no answering grin lit up her face. Her head dropped down, and the lines of her body declared defeat. She didn't look at me when she spoke next, and I had to lean forward to hear her. "There's just no way I can ever make this up to you."
"It's not your fault," I said immediately, automatically. "I forgave you a long time ago, remember? And the day after tomorrow – "
"Stop taking care of me, Beatrice." Her voice was brittle. "I used to think that Naomi paid a terrible price by not growing up planetside, but – she knew what grass was, she got shore leave and the holodeck, and she had the database to teach her the rest. But you and Zayek, you've never – ". She stopped and steadied herself. "Everything that a child should take for granted, education and food, medicine and sunshine, will always seem like a novelty to you, won't it?"
"Not everything," I said softly. "I had a family."
She reached out for my hand. "Yes," she said. "You did, but no thanks to me. If I had just told you about your father – instead of being such a coward – "
"Mama." Tentatively, I stretched out a hand and lifted her chin, feeling very grown-up as I forced her to look at me. "Chakotay – I would have liked it, if you'd told me. But you made Tom and Maddie and B'Elanna and Joe and everyone into – and I didn't need to know." Now wasn't the time to tell her how angry and confused I'd been, to tell her that at seven I'd reimagined asexual reproduction to explain his absence. All that resentment was gone, trapped below the ice, too. "You gave me more than you realize."
She clenched her eyes shut, shaking her head. "It'll never be enough, Bea." She enclosed my hand in hers, holding it against her cool cheek. "You deserved more."
I knew then that there was nothing I could say, and no absolution I could offer. Being rescued hadn't erased the pains and privations of the last fifteen years; they only stood out sharper against the luxury of the modern Federation and the lives we should have led. Instead, I nosed my way up against her, tucking my head under her chin and listening to the shuddering of her breath as she tried not to cry.
Minutes passed before her breath steadied, and when she spoke she was my mother again. "Now, why can't you sleep?"
Ear against her beating heart, I opened my eyes. "You first."
She picked up the PADD still resting on her knee. "I was trying to write to Chakotay. LaForge won't let me visit any of them until the admiralty approves, and given Starfleet's current policies on treason I'm not holding my breath." She scrolled through the letter, and I could tell that it was made up of several half-finished paragraphs. "I wanted to tell him - that night was so out of character for me, Beatrice, but I wanted him to know, once and for all - and I wanted to tell him about you. How quick and kind and impossibly good you are." She blinked the tears from her eyes. "You know, Bea, I spent years composing this in my head, but I can't seem to get it down. It's all so tangled now."
Me, Tessa, and fifteen years of mourning: what had seemed so natural on their last night in the Delta Quadrant had grown into something complicated, but I didn't know how to untangle it, either. Instead, I answered her question. "It's too warm to sleep."
She shifted, and I raised my head to look at her. So close, I could see the papery lines spidering from her eyes, the creases worn around her mouth by a thousand crooked smiles. "Computer," she said, slowly, "Reduce ambient temperature by five degrees centigrade." Laying the PADD down on the table, she stood up and pulled me to my feet. "Better?"
I could feel the cooler air circulating already. "Still too noisy," I said softly. She glanced out at the darkened living room and the small bedroom beyond, then walked toward the double bed and turned down the pale grey sheets. I stepped toward the door, but stopped. "And the stars are so bright."
She slid, narrow feet first, into the bed, and after a pause held open the blankets for me. "They are, aren't they?" Though the bed was wide, habit and invisible Jefferies tube walls crowded us close. "Computer, decrease lights."
If I squeezed my eyes shut, I couldn't see the stars or the faint glow of the wall consoles, and with my mother's wiry arms wrapped around me, the rush of her blood and her even breath almost overpowered the ship's hum. The air was almost cold, and I snuggled into her embrace, pretending just for the space of my dreams that Chakotay and Harry hadn't come yet, that my world was intact. And if we were still on Voyager, curled in the darkness, dreaming of rescue, I could imagine that the lives that waited for us were bright, untouched by Starfleet's response to a war we'd never anticipated, unmarred by fifteen years' loss.