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NOTES: Episode Add on For Author Author - Part 2 (two parts due to web site chop off !)
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Part 4 - PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF - Part 2
"Might I ask when you recently had your world ripped out from under you ?" he asked. He had meant it to be a polite enquiry, but as usual it came out sounding mildly sarcastic.
" Funnily enough not that long ago," Janeway sighed into the blackness the other side of the viewport, her thoughts drifitng back over her less than joyful recent past.
She turned slowly to reach for her coffee cup. Without looking up she followed the swells and dips the coffee made as she gently circled it around in her cup. She watched the bright flashes of reflected light stand out against the dark background. She thought about telling the EMH all that was really getting to her at the moment but decided that it was probably not a good time, and the Doctor was not likely to make a great confidante, prone as he was to interrupting with comments on the state of her health. But she owed him something.
" There comes a time doctor when you think that you have everything just right in your life. You have a nice home, good neighbors. Your job gets you down on occasion but on the whole its better than you could have wished for. You get to go out once in a while and let your hair down, make a couple of nice, close friends. And everything seems perfect.
Then one day you wake up and realize all of that was all a bad dream. What you truly have is better. Your real life neighbors actually invite you to dinner instead of just sitting with you for meals. Your real job is actually quite fulfilling and carries a lot more importance to a lot more people. You find that people look forward to seeing you when you turn up at a bar for a drink. You find out that your apartment has a much nicer view than the one in the dream, mostly because you have someone to share it with. Someone who chose you for who you are, not what you are. Someone who doesn't care that you burnt dinner to a crisp.
Then, the next day, you're woken up by a friendly face saying that its all been a bad dream. That you're home safe. That your among friends. But you can't find your friends and your home is a grey box with a spectacular view to share with no one. Now you tell me, Doctor, which one was the real bad dream."
Janeway sipped her coffee again.
" You see Doctor, I know very well what its like to have something you've invested yourself in taken away from you. To have something you were proud of mutated into a lie."
The doctor stared at her blankly. The captain merely sighed. The sudden changed in her mood worried the physician in him. He wondered what he could have said that had triggered such an attack of melancholy
" I'll have a word with Mr Paris tomorrow. I promise you he won't be amending any more of your book anytime soon." She placed a friendly hand on the Doctor's arm " and I promise that between Tuvok and I, we'll make sure this little world that you've come to love and be loved in will continue to exist"
" Thank you, Captain," the doctor smiled as he left the room.
He wandered down the auxiliary corridor to the lift slowly, feeling no real rush to do anything at the moment. He was feeling better, he knew that, but his own good feeling was being tempered by the fact that he knew there was someone who felt worse. He hadn't seen the captain that depressed in the last two or three years. But then he also knew that she and Chakotay had been fighting a lot lately, or so the scuttlebutt said. He was well aware that the Commander was her rock during tough times. He knew what it was like when Kes left and he no longer had a right hand that he could rely on without question and without the need to utter his troubles. Like Kes had always known how he was down, Chakotay had always sensed the downturn in Kathryn's mood. They had both seemed fine together the other day. Perhaps there was a problem between the both of them that went a little deeper than it appeared. Frankly, as fickle as humanoids were, he wouldn't have been surprised. He had given up trying to understand them years ago.
Wandering into sickbay the Doctor slumped resignedly into his chair and opened his terminal. He cued up the legal texts that Tuvok had given him and began to read, muttering slightly to himself that he was the only one he could rely on to see him through this now.
He had no Kes and he had no Seven. Though he would in time be proved wrong, he believed that in the here and now, he was alone in this.
And for the briefest moment, he finally understood the sunken look on the Captain's face as he had left her.
She was alone.
Kathryn Janeway sighed as she slumped into her chair. The day's deliberations with the Arbiter and Broht hadn't gone as swimmingly as they had hoped, but they had at least struck the first blow in a fight that Kathryn suspected was going to go on for a while. The Doctor's case for sentience was going to be a little more long winded a battle than the case of Commander Data, on whose case Tuvok was basing most of his argument. Data, however, had an ace up his sleeve where his case was concerned. He was unique. There were several thousand EMH Mark I's around the Alpha Quadrant. For all his superior social skills compared to Data, and for all the amazing scientific and techonological developments and procedures that he had pioneered, the Federation was prepared to merely accept that Broht wasn't able to publish his work without his permission. It wasn't a major victory but it was something.
Why then did she feel worse now than she had all week ? She had felt herself sliding downhill for a while, felt the same darkness that enveloped her when she became maudlin wrapping itself around her again. That was usually bad enough in itself, but this felt worse because she couldn't find anything to pin her moroseness on. She had felt it the most when she had looked at the image of Earth Reg had showed them all the other morning. She had expected to feel elated, to feel the a new surge of courage and impetus based on the fact that she could almost taste home. But she had felt hollow. She had hidden her numbness when she had spoken to Reg. She had hoped that perhaps it would just take her a while to fully grasp the reality of how close they really were right now.
But it had been a week. She had tried to focus on the Doctor's case, but it had all seemed so much effort. She had practically ignored his pleas for equality the other evening, instead starting to ramble on about her own lonliness. She didn't know where the rant had come from. It had just burst forth, The Doctor had mentioned having his security blanket of a world ripped from him and Kathryn has finally realised why she had been so devastated at the loss of her life on Quarra. It wasn't anything to do with losing Jaffen, as nice a man as he had been. It had been the loss of her one real escape from the lonliness of life as a Starship Captain. She loved every single member of her crew, called some her friends. But if she had her llife to live over again, she thought, she would have agreed with herself when she had asked Chakotay who would want such responsibility. Chakotay. Ever calm, ever dependable. She had hoped to spend time with Chakotay, because, despite how it annoyed the hell out of her sometimes, he had an unerring knack of getting to root of what ever was sticking in her craw. It was a pain in the ass at times, but she missed it. He had a special way of getting through to her, of helping her to come to terms with things.
The thing was that Chakotay was always busy, always asked her if they could raincheck. It felt like her right arm was missing, that only half of her was there at anyone time. It was a situation she had never approved of. She had always hated being dependant on anyone, but that was just what she had unwittingly gone and done.
And it suddenly struck Kathryn why she had felt so numb when she had seen Earth. Although he had been there, he was not in his usual place right behind her. She was used to his very close presence. Sometimes it had been a little closer than was perhaps appropriate, but she had always drawn strength from it. She was used to being able to just lean back against him and share something, sometimes professionally, sometimes personally. But he was always there, her rock. That morning she had stood before Owen and Reg and she had been alone.
Placing her head in her hands, Kathryn tried vainly to fight off the desperate lonliness that was threatening her. But she succeeded only in making her fingers damp as the tears threaded their way through the gaps in her fingers. She felt more than just the loss of her first officer, she felt the loss of her friend. And the loss of something...else.
The truth was, she finally admitted to herself, she wasn't overjoyed at seeing the images of Earth, because she had no reason to go back there. Everything she wanted was right here. Back that way lay difficulty and decisions. Back that way lay an uncertain road. And if she hadn't promised 150 people that she would get them home again, she would have turned tail and headed right back to New Earth by now. Home meant saying good bye to certain people, and she didn't think she could do that. Kathryn had a sudden realisation as she had heard everyone make their testimonies to the Arbiter about the importance of the Doctor to them, that several of things they said echoed true in her own life. It had hit home most surely when Seven had told the commission of how the Doctor had managed to preserve her humanity out here and Kathryn had realised that was what Chakotay, among other things, did for her. Chakotay was more than her first officer, he was her confidante, her concience. He was her best friend and her sounding board. He was closer to her than she had ever let any one get. He was strong, dependable, thoughtful and handsome. He cared. Kathryn realised that the only reason she had picked Jaffen as her lover, was that he reminded her in so many ways of Chakotay. And that she, despite all her efforts and parameters to the contrary, was in love with him.