And When You're Alone for a Moment
Je te laisserai des mots / I will leave you notes
En d'sous de ta porte / Under your door
En d'sous de la lune qui chante / Under the singing moon
Tout près de la place où tes pieds passent / Just where your footsteps fall
Cachés dans les trous de ton divan / Hidden in the holes of your couch
Et quand tu es seule pendant un instant / And when you're alone for a moment
Ramasse-moi / Pick me up
Quand tu voudras / When you want to
—Patrick Watson, "Je te laisserai des mots"
Kathryn withdraws into her quarters, weariness in the very marrow of her bones. A near miss. Too close for her comfort. If they'd been prevented for another moment from locking on to Tom's signal, if Tom hadn't regained consciousness just long enough to shout the name of the spy, if Voyager had taken even one more hit…
Too close.
She thinks of her strangled plea on the Bridge: Transporter Room 2, do you have him?
A beat, an instant, an agony of uncountable seconds, before the response had come. We have him, Captain. He's alright.
And she'd sagged with relief even as the larger battle was far from over. Felt Chakotay's eyes on her back, scrutinizing. Worrying.
And she sags now, allowing herself for the first time to feel the full force of the day's events, shrugging out of her uniform jacket like a too-tight skin and casting it aside.
Tom is alright. Voyager is safe. But she feels frozen, with fear, with guilt, and it's as though her mind cannot absorb the meaning behind the words. Tom is alright. Voyager is safe. But it was too close.
And it was her call. To send him away. To keep Voyager in range of the Kazon's weapons until she could get him back. She'd have done the same for any member of her crew, yes, but—
She forces herself to move away from the door, stepping into the room properly. She calls for lights, and for the first time she notices that her quarters are not how she left them. A slim box sits atop her coffee table, wrapped in blue ribbon. She stares at it.
"I know what you're thinking," says a voice, soft, from the direction of her bedroom.
"I promise that you don't," she counters unsteadily.
Tom, out of uniform, stands in the doorway. A tired smile on his unbruised face.
"I thought the Doctor was keeping you overnight."
"I broke out." She frowns, so he adds, "I'm fine. Look," he demonstrates, gesturing to where there had been harrowing injuries to his skull, hands, ribcage. "All healed. Not a scratch on me. Like it never happened."
Something inside her finally fractures and she chokes out a laugh that sounds like a sob. She places a trembling hand over her mouth. "It's not. It's not fine."
He comes to her then, folds her into his arms, his head resting on hers. His body is warm where hers is ice and he murmurs something soothing that she can't make out, but she feels his words reverberate through her, and it helps. She squeezes her eyes shut against the realities of their situation. They stay like this for some time, swaying a little, wordlessly reassuring each other of their essential aliveness. She inhales shakily, thinks Tom and then safe, over and over, a litany that could so easily have become an elegy.
Finally, the pull of the box tied with ribbon draws her out of herself. Tom feels the shift and leans back to follow her gaze. He releases her, slowly, a little unwillingly.
"I do know what you're thinking," he says again, quietly. She drags her gaze away to meet his eyes, surprised to see a melancholy there.
"You're thinking the risk was too high after all," he begins, ticking points off on his fingers. "You're thinking you don't know how you would've lived with yourself if I hadn't made it back. You're blaming yourself because the mission was your decision. And you're afraid you won't want to send me back on the line now."
And he's right: this is what she's been thinking. She's been wondering how there can be no regulations against Starfleet captains becoming involved with fellow officers, when there is every chance of needing to order the love of your life into extreme danger and then having his blood on your hands. How Starfleet can have faith in its captains to make the right and selfless call when she herself is not sure she can do it ever again. She does think she isn't strong enough to send him back on the line. This is precisely why she was going to marry a landlocked philosopher, before.
She says none of this aloud, because she knows what will have to happen once she does. She can't confine her helmsman to quarters to keep him safe for the next seventy years; she can't get this crew home if she is paralyzed by terror every time she needs his expertise on an away mission. She cannot reconcile, logically, any of these things with their being together, still.
So she says nothing. She waits. He searches her face and, apparently understanding the war waging inside her, he moves to the coffee table and picks up the box.
"You're thinking that the only way you can handle sending me on another away mission is if you shut down, shut me out. And you don't want to do that, either, so you're beating yourself up, because this is the job, and you think there's no room for your own personal feelings for the next seventy thousand odd lightyears."
She lifts her arms helplessly, palms open in a gesture of surrender, lets them fall again. He's not wrong.
She can't say it.
He holds out the box and she takes it from him a little uncertainly. She finds that she is afraid of what she'll discover inside. What it will mean, whatever it is. What action she will have to take, after. Because after everything, surely, it will not be some mere trinket of his affection.
She slips the ribbon off of the box, carefully removes its lid. Inside is a single piece of paper, folded several times. She looks up, but Tom's expression is inscrutable.
Paper. An unaccountable rarity. Tom tends to read on PADDs, but he knows that she prefers replicating old-fashioned hardcover books, to engage with not just the story but the whole textual experience of it, the feel of the leather binding or stretched cloth against her palms, rich black ink on the page. He must have a pen, then, too, and she imagines him grasping the unfamiliar device, bent low over his desk, collecting his thoughts, poised to write them down for her.
Carefully, she removes his gift, places the box back on the table. Unfolding the paper, it occurs to her that this is the first time she has seen his handwriting, ever. The intimacy of it stuns her for a moment and she studies the words without reading them, taking in the shape of each letter, the careful loops, all the little idiosyncrasies in his L's and Y's. The words a little cramped, but in a comforting, somehow familiar way, like an embrace rather than out of haste.
She rubs a corner of the textured paper between her thumb and forefinger, careful not to smudge the ink.
"Something tangible," he says. "Something that you can hold on to. There are others; you'll find them. When you need them."
Suddenly, she understands. It knocks all the wind out of her but her eyes meet his and god, she understands, he's doing it for her. He isn't going to try to talk her out of it. If she can't allow them to be together, then he will leave her notes. Pieces of himself. So she will not be totally alone.
She sees something like tempered grief in his eyes and she knows what this must have cost him. And not just here, now, but the planning of it; and how, yes, he must have known before she did, perhaps before he'd even left the ship, to what inevitability he would return. And that he did it anyway, simply because she'd asked him to.
And that he would free her, now, from at least this one responsibility.
She forces herself to focus, reads the three short lines before her, then reads them again. Takes a steadying breath and lowers the paper. Tom waits.
"No," she says, at last. Her voice feels raw, like she's been screaming her feelings for all the ship to hear, and maybe she has. It feels like that, a rush of adrenaline surges up and she feels like if she hasn't been screaming that now might be a good time to start, before she says something she can't take back, but no, she's sure now. She's sure, for the first time, she knows what she wants and she knows that she can bear it, because—
"No?" Tom frowns, uncomprehending.
—because if he can be strong enough for this then she can bear it all. That he could let her go for the good of the ship means that she could, too, if it came to it. Means that they can support each other, be strong together. Sacrifice, together. Their loving each other does not have to mean, also, that sending him into harm's way is an unforgivable act from which she would never recover. Somehow it has not occurred to her to take his consent, his understanding, his dedication to the job equal to her own, into consideration of her consuming guilt.
"No," she says again. She carefully sets his note aside, steps forward to hold his face in her hands. No, the most liberating syllable she has ever uttered, its meaning so different from what she'd thought at the start of this conversation. No, she will not walk away. No, she will not let him do it for her. She says no and she hopes it sounds, to Tom, like yes. She raises herself up on tiptoes and kisses him, trusting that he will understand. And as she feels his hands drop low on her waist to draw her into him, feels him deepen their kiss without hesitation, she knows that he must. As he always has before.
Later, she will read his note again and again, until the creases in the paper are worn thin, edges frayed by her touch, and it will comfort her each time, just as he'd intended. And he will leave her others, tucking fragments into her desk drawer, under her pillow, behind their bathroom mirror. But this note, like the binding of a favorite book, will hold her together through their long journey. A reminder, always, that she is not alone.
Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.