Chapter 8: Linger
"Careful with that pie. Wouldn't want you to have to squeeze into your trousers tomorrow."
The victim of the taunt gives a muted glare. His irritation, however slight, more than a little encouraged by the fact that he's not as trim as he used to be.
"You aren't going to dump me because I'm not the same trim First Officer you hired, are you?"
"Maybe. If I can find someone who looks better in the uniform than you do. . . But I wouldn't hold my breath on that last part."
The compliment, even if delivered on the heels of a jest at his expense, causes Chakotay to favor Kathryn with a smile.
"You're so easy," Kathryn teases, laughing as he predictably preens at her last remark.
"Sometimes I'm easy," Chakotay cautions, "and sometimes I'm just a tease."
"I'm going to hope, for Seven's sake, that the two tendencies exist in an optimal ratio."
Her friend snickers at this last remark, further sprawling on her floor, and his arm almost catching the mug filled with whiskey as he wriggles in an entirely undignified manner.
Golden light streaks through the windows of Kathryn's quarters, falling over Chakotay's writhing body, though it's well past 23:00; the thirty-six-hour day of the planet they've set down on defying their standard system of time keeping.
If Kathryn turns around on the couch, looking at the figures far below the ship, she can see her crew milling about in steady droves. Some of them are working, but others are merely taking in the sky; soaking up the rays of an alien sun before returning to the ship they've all called home for years.
Despite their apparent appreciation for the chance to lay foot on ground, well over half of the crew have opted to remain living on board during the repairs (with all the entailed inconveniences), rather than living in the temporary shelters available to them.
"I'm in," Harry had declared, upon B'Elanna noting that the conduits typically used for life support could easily be opened to allow for the ventilation of breathable air from the outside, and portable generators used for the most basic power needs, once the first three days of repairs were completed.
"You'd really want to stay aboard?" Kathryn had asked him. Worrying that her Ensign's distress at setting down- his despair at further delaying their return to the Alpha Quadrant- was getting the best of him.
"I like my own couch and my own bed," Harry had shrugged simply.
Presently sitting in her own living room, the natural light filling the room not seeming nearly as odd as it did their first week here, she looks at her First Officer with abrupt concern.
"Careful of the alcohol," she chides, in a voice slightly louder than need be, moving the whiskey safely to the coffee table.
The warning only makes Chakotay laugh louder, his arm flailing directly over the spot the mug occupied only seconds earlier.
"I think we've had enough," she announces, looking at him with a critical eye even as she fails to contain her own smirk.
"Enough pie? Or enough whiskey?"
"Both."
He nods, eventually sitting up as his chuckles slowly subside.
"So what is the lovely Seven of Nine doing this evening?" Kathryn asks, extending him her arm as he clamors to his feet.
"She said she was spending time with a friend," Chakotay sighs. "I assume it's Tom. But if her vagueness on the subject is any indication, I have absolutely no interest in what he's planning for her."
She snorts, her decidedly tipsy state- perhaps bordering on drunkenesss- only permitting humor at the mention of the ship's pilot. Or at least, only permitting humor in this context.
"You should be kind to him," she tsks.
"Because he's the only one who knows how to fly the ship straight?"
"Because he is the giver of whiskey," Kathryn reminds, pointing to the mug.
The seriousness with which he pronounces her statement strikes Chakotay as funny, setting him off again as Kathryn watches in semi-disbelief.
"Have you always been this much of a lightweight?" she asks incredulously.
"I, madam, am not a lightweight. I am a heavy weight."
For a brief pause, Kathryn allows herself to the bask in the beauty of this feeling. Her best friend, in his impaired state, having absolutely no idea the barb for which he has left himself wide-open.
"In more ways than one," she declares with a smile, and to his immediate air of deflation.
"Maybe I should been out running with Tom, these last two weeks," Chakotay sighs.
"Tom's been running?" she asks, surprised.
He nods, though not particularly interested in the line of conversation.
"I've never really understood running as a hobby," he admits, and almost to himself, as he curls up on the opposite end of the couch.
"How so? You box. Engage in other martial arts."
"I'm not saying I don't understand the need to exert one's self," he allows with a shrug. "I just don't see the appeal of running. . . No matter how far you go, you tend to end up right back where you started."
In a sober state, replies concerning his own need to channel his inner frustration into pummeling imaginary opponents, rather than real ones, would occur to Kathryn. But here and now, she only gives a small tip of her head before regarding her empty cup for a while.
"You're getting married tomorrow," she says eventually, and with a smile that hides her mix of feelings at the statement
"I'm getting married tomorrow," he echoes, his own grin as bright as the sunshine lighting up the room.
"I'm sorry that repair schedule delayed the ceremony," she offers, but before she finishes the sentence, he's already waving her off.
"Neither of us minded," he replies quickly, not commenting that Seven had even been relieved, at the time. "And I'm just happy we'll have the chance to have it here, on solid ground."
As he looks dreamily out the window, Kathryn contemplates both his words and the familiar expression he adopts.
She and Chakotay have never thought of exploration in the same way, and she knows, when all is said and done, he'll likely leave this way of life behind for a quiet one planet-side, once they've returned to the Alpha Quadrant. It's a difference between them that used to perplex her, but one that she now quietly accepts with an inward smile. Knowing her thoughts, a few years earlier, would have been painful here. An endless series of 'what-ifs' plaguing her ; the remaining mental images of another planet, long abandoned, and a metal shelter that stands alone in a dense patch of trees.
Looking across at her friend, she feels a genuine sense of happiness for him. But this feeling, however profound and sincere, still leaves room for her own sense of loneliness. And so, too, bids forth a slow sense of regret, even if one not concerning the man who presently joins her.
"If the internal sensors were working, we could spy on Seven," she jokes, in order to distract her mind from her present thoughts.
"I think it's better that I can't," Chakotay laughs. Adding, with a rueful smirk, "you weren't at Harry's bachelor party. You have no idea what depraved possibilities lurk for Seven at the hands of Tom's planning."
He's exaggerating for effect, Kathryn knows, but this return to silliness suits her just fine.
"I wasn't at Harry's bachelor party because no one invited me," she accuses.
"It was a bachelor party!" he defends.
"And yet B'Elanna went!"
He pulls a face, pretending to be caught at something, and despite her attempt to appear stern, she starts to laugh.
"Could you imagine Harry's face if you had shown up?" he chuckles darkly.
"The good Ensign would have survived."
"Now he would have," he corrects. "But two years ago?"
Kathryn considers his point, her concession signaled with a wave of laughter.
"I guess, by comparison, your bachelor party is pretty sad," she muses, looking around the quiet quarters.
In truth, this is exactly what he wanted, and he has expressed as much to her. But seeing the contemplative expression that appeared on her face a minute earlier, he knows better than to drop their light banter too soon.
"Well . . . I had hoped for Orion slave girls. But there's only so much even you can do while the holodecks are down."
"No slaves girls," Kathryn smirks, reaching for the whiskey again. "Only one woman here, and she's definitely not a girl anymore."
The last part is voiced in a tone that courts a kind of darkness, and Chakotay waits to reply until she meets his gaze again.
"Not a girl," he admits slowly. "But still as beautiful today as the day I met her."
She opens her mouth to reply as her eyes take on a sheen, but then decides against it, unable to find the words. Falling into a companionable silence as the sun continues its slow descent outside her window, they allow themselves to linger in the warmth that has sustained each of them for nearly a decade.
. . . . .
As Seven glances around the empty cargo bay, taking in the simple picnic she's constructed, she thinks back to one of her first dates with the man she's about to marry. And in spite of the all feelings of worry generated by her present dinner companion, she fills with a sense of peace, as well as a wave of relief.
"Where did you just go?" the Doctor asks, his nervous curiosity at her distraction tempered with a slight smile.
"Not far," she replies, reaching for the juice that sits to her right.
A long silence ensues after this' one that leaves both parties uncomfortable.
As pleased as the Doctor is that Seven invited him here, he doesn't know what's appropriate to say and what isn't. It's a problem he's often grappled with, but one that he's rarely admitted as openly as he does now. And even here, only to himself.
"I almost canceled the wedding," she pronounces stoically, her eyes on the checkered cloth they perch on.
"What?" the hologram stammers. "Why?"
"I was afraid," Seven says, but without making any move to elaborate.
"Afraid of getting married? Afraid of marrying Chakotay?"
She searches him for any sign of optimism at this last question, but finding none, her attentions return to the picnic below them.
"Afraid that all relationships fail," she admits. And though she busies herself with the straightening the napkin in her lap, the Doctor's gaze doesn't drift form her.
"I'm sorry I abandoned our friendship," he says, when she inevitably meets his eyes. "I was. . . very selfish."
It's an apology she's had coming for more than two years, and one that she's ready to accept. If only she can figure out how to push through the fog of hurt that still clings to her.
"You were," she pronounces evenly. "But the nature of humanity is often to consider one's own needs before those of others."
It's a kind of compliment as well as an echo of her own mistakes. The exact exchange of sentiments that passes between them, however tacitly, being she one could not have with anyone else aboard the ship.
"Human nature can surprise you with its flexibility," the Doctor cautions, and taking on a tone of pedagogy that he knows is no longer suitable with Seven. "Even in the midst of sorrow and torment, it's capable of producing art and beauty. Hope. Compassion."
"Forgiveness," she adds, tracing her glass with her finger.
"Forgiveness," he echoes, the ghost of a smile appearing on his face.
The Doctor's voice is hopeful if tinged with sadness. And although Seven's own hope is far more measured, she allows herself to give into the comfort of a presence she's dearly missed.
. . . . .
As Tom looks on at the water beside them, he takes in a deep breath. Giving himself the brief mental space to appreciate the beauty around him, in the midst of all that is going on.
The waters of the small lake they're next to are more tranquil than the ocean they left behind, just a kilometer away. The temperature is still cool, the sun having yet to crest in the sky, and the sunlight remains a gentle glow; a subtle promise of the warmth that will come later.
A strong breeze stirs his hair and the moment passes; he turns his attention to the proceedings as Kathryn begins to speak again.
"And do you, Chakotay, take Seven, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, to love and to respect, until death do you part?"
"I do."
Kathryn smiles softly, turning from her friend's glassy brown eyes to the woman who stands beside him.
"And do you, Seven, take Chakotay, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, to love and to respect, until death do you part?"
As Seven's shoulders begin to shake and her head ducks down, Kathryn looks briefly at Chakotay. Believing the woman he loves to be overcome with joy or even fear, Chakotay grasps Seven's hand, trying to make eye contact with her and assure her of his presence.
From his stance on the other side of Chakotay, angled toward the couple, Tom is the first to meet Seven's eyes. And the moment he sees her face, a smirk immediately appears at his mouth.
Seven isn't crying. She's laughing.
Clueing in, Kathryn and Chakotay both look on questioningly. And Tom explains in a low voice that somehow manages to still carry, that Seven is laughing at 'to have and to hold'. And though Tom doesn't fill them in on the off-color joke he made to bride regarding this line, just two days earlier, the reality of what is transpiring still hits them, eliciting growing rumbles of laughter from the wedding party. It dawning on each of them, one by one, that standing in front of all of her friends and loved ones, and on the day of her own wedding, the former drone has discovered something that has eluded her for years; the appreciation of a dirty joke.
As Kathryn bites her lip and tries to regain her composure, Tom looks at her struggling and lets out a large clap of laughter that proves to be her undoing. The understanding of what's happening spreads out from there; the laughter fanning out steadily, as row by row, the assembled crew shares in the joke.
"Well, that's a first," the ship's Captain declares, when it looks like the members of the wedding party have stilled enough to move on.
"Let it be noted," Tom jokes, looking at Kathryn, "when you asked Seven if she wanted to be with Chakotay for the rest of her life, she laughed in your face."
"Thanks, Paris," Chakotay grumbles, despite his smile and Seven's renewed laughter. "Good to know you're on my side."
Several minutes later, the ceremony finally resumes, the wide smiles that have materialized remaining long after the laughter has stopped.
. . . . .
"I'm pretty sure Chakotay's going to kill you later," B'Elanna teases, sitting across from Tom at the reception.
"Thankfully, I think he's a little occupied right now," the pilot replies, nodding with a smile to where Chakotay and Seven dance gracefully, several meters away.
B'Elanna's brow furrows as though she's looking at schematics, her arms reflexively crossing in front of her.
"He's always been a complete klutz when it comes to music," she puzzles, shaking her head. "I wonder how he finally learned to dance."
Tom sips his beverage, regarding the smile that's yet to leave Seven's face.
"No idea," he replies casually.
Just as B'Elanna begins to study Tom's expression, Harry slips into the seat next to her.
"Hey," Harry greets with a smile. "Who's ready for wedding cake?"
"I'm always ready for cake," B'Elanna declares. "Even if Chell has refused to name the cake's ingredients."
"I'm sure it will be fine," Tom assures, dragging his attention away from the dancing couple. "Even Neelix wouldn't sneak Leola Root into a cake."
"Could be in the filling," Harry cautions.
"Chell's wedding day surprise to the happy couple," Tom laughs.
"I can just see Chakotay now- trying to force a smile on his face as he chokes down his first bite."
B'Elanna's last statement is said in a low voice, the image designed to produce dark amusement. And as the three fall into conspiratorial laughter at the joke, the years seem to melt away for each of them.
Harry, like always, is the last to recover. And as Tom watches the younger man with continued amusement, B'Elanna's husband, ready to hand their restless daughter over, signals her silently from where he sits, two tables away.
"Duty calls," B'Elanna announces, with a rueful smile.
"Save a dance for me," Tom calls.
"If my daughter's mood will allow it," she replies, retreating from the table.
It's only a minute later that Harry looks at Tom with an apologetic smile.
"You should go dance with your wife," Tom says, already knowing what his friend is about to say. "Before she decides to trade you in for someone better."
"Like who?" Harry asks, smiling as he stands.
"I don't know. Me? . . . In those sorted holonovels, it's always the best friend the spouse cheats with."
The Ensign pauses, seeming to weigh the possibilities.
"Nah," Harry dismisses. "Jenny likes a full head of hair on a guy."
The joke earns Harry an exaggerated scowl from his best friend, and as he walks away, Tom begins to scan the crowd around him.
Not far out of his eye line, Kathryn stands talking with Tuvok. The two are deep in conversation, and as Kathryn gestures in animated way that Tom recognizes, he guesses that she's telling a story about her family or the Academy. Tom continues to watch as, after particularly long description from Kathryn, Tuvok voices a one-word response that makes his companion snort.
The smile that has appeared on Tom's face freezes when Kathryn catches him watching her, holding his gaze long enough to send him a questioning look as her own smile briefly falters. Noticing the exchange, Tuvok promptly excuses himself, and after a moment of hesitation, Tom rises from his seat to make his way to where Kathryn stands.
"Should even ask what the three of you were laughing about over there?" Kathryn asks, after an awkward pause, once he reaches her.
"Probably not," Tom smiles, realizing she was watching him, too.
Kathryn's own smile falters after a moment, and looking around, Tom theorizes that they probably have half an hour before Chakotay and Seven begin opening presents.
"Want to go for a walk?" he asks.
She appears surprised, but still agrees. It's the first time he's made any attempt to spend time alone with her, and even as he extends the offer, she fills with equal measures of hope and nervousness.
They set off slowly, tracing the lake's edge, and for the first few minutes neither speak. Tom squints into the still rising sun, his face distorting with pleasure as the light strikes his cheek.
"It's lovely here," Kathryn says, in a wistful voice. "I can see why Chakotay picked this spot for the ceremony. . . Too bad they won't be able to revisit it."
"They will," Tom murmurs, causing Kathryn to give him a questioning look. "My wedding gift is a holoprogram of this place," he explains.
She smiles a little, thinking it a fitting gift, coming from him.
"Is it just of the lake?" she asks, genuinely interested.
"The lake. The clearing Voyager sits in. . . Everything that stretches in between."
"That sounds lovely," she says, her smile widening. "I'm sure they'll love it."
"Hopefully as much as Seven liked your gift," he replies, giving her a sly look.
"That dress did look lovely on her," she sighs, overwhelmed with relief that he recognized, even in a small way, that the thought of him has stayed with her.
"Flawless," he concludes, with a slight shake of his head.
"Good thing you taught Chakotay how not to step on the matching shoes, while they dance."
He pulls a face, a little disappointed that someone figured it out, but not all surprised that she was the one to do so.
"What gave it away?" he asks, causing her to roll her eyes.
"He would have shut off a holo-instructor midway through the first lesson," she says, knowing her friend's temper. "And isn't as if he would trust anyone else to keep it a secret."
The last part comes as a surprising statement, but after reflection, he concedes her thesis with a small shrug. They resume their slow walk, dropping their banter about the friends who've just married. Neither one quite courageous enough to address the thought that it could have been their own wedding, had events unraveled differently.
When the lull in conversation grows stale, Tom thinks back to his talk with Seven, ten days earlier; wondering if she's yet to confide her fears in Chakotay as he silently wishes her the trust to do so. The same trust he tries to summon now, circling a body of water with a woman he's loved and cursed simultaneously.
"We never talked about Justin," he says, closing his eyes to block out the sun that is now directly in front of them.
Perhaps, too, to block out the shadow of pain he is certain his words will bring to her face.
Had he kept his eyes open, he would have seen that her face became expressionless instead. She's had decades to mask the ache of this wound, after all.
"Nothing really to say,'' she says casually. "It was a long time ago."
It's a lie. And Tom thinks that she has to know that he knows it. At least, he has to know if he's finally asking. Because as much as they shared, as many stories of woe and joy that they confided in each other, they've never talked about the first man she intended to marry. Or the fact that she watched him, along with her father, sink to an icy grave.
Which isn't to say Tom didn't know. Far from it. Before he even met her at Auckland, he had heard, among the many tales of Kathryn Janeway his father told, the hushed voices of his parents in the living room of his family home. Listening several nights in a row from the landing, only a teenager then, as his father expressed concern for a young officer who was the sole survival of an accident that claimed the lives of two of her loved ones. His father' normally stern voice softening when he confided in his wife that he thought the young woman would never recover.
Walking next to Kathryn now, Tom remembers the pain he felt then, and for a woman he hadn't even met. And going back over the last year in his head, his own studious silence on the issue when they were together, the scorn that he used to direct toward the woman next to him turns a bit inward.
"Yes. . . a long time ago," Tom says finally, and adopting the same expressionless face Kathryn already wears.
As they return from their walk, both forcing smiles on their faces as they mingle once more with the crew, Seven watches the pair carefully.
"See something interesting?" Chakotay asks, wrapping an arm around her waist. He follows her line of sight to Tom and Kathryn, making a sound in the back of his throat when he takes note of the faint air of pain that clings to both of them. "I used to wish things would just get back to normal for those two. But now I'm not even sure what that would look like for them at this point."
Seven sees her husband's point, and has had the same thought. But still, looking at Tom standing next to the woman he avoided months earlier, she feels a strange optimism. She meets Chakotay's patient eyes. Eyes that will remain patient, even when she finds the ability to voice fears he's yet to hear.
"One never knows," Seven says, raising an eyebrow. "Humans are surprisingly flexible."
Chakotay smiles, kissing his wife's bare shoulder, as they remain in their private moment just a bit longer, amid the quickly gathering crowd of friends.
. . . . .
Approaching the holodeck, Kathryn ticks away the minutes of yet another sleepless night in her head. It's one of a thousand, in here years out here, and as she feels the ship's deck plates pulse beneath her feet, she wishes it brought her the same comfort it once did.
This same sensation of her ship at high warp is one she longed for two months ago, when Voyager first touched ground to a planet they would remain on for only a few weeks. The time on the planet seeming to be over before she knew it, and in spite of her worry that it would drag on and on for all of them.
And now, week by week, as she's slipped back into her normal routine of bridge shifts and hours delineated by only a chronometer, she has begun to miss the feeling of wind and the smell of fresh air. Feeling strangely nostalgic of the way her quarters looked when aglow with golden light rather than starscape.
When she reaches the entrance, she's surprised to see that the holodeck is occupied. There's no privacy lock engaged, but even before she asks the computer who the occupant is, she can easily guesses, given the program running.
Entering Sandrine's, she inhales the musty scent of holographic wood, dust, and stale salt air that drifts in from the nearby port.
She can't remember the last time she was in the program, Tom having, in her mind, abandoned it for his garage program, and before that Fair Haven and Captain Proton. Wracking her brain, she can't remember him mentioning going to Sandrine's during all that time. And she wonders, watching him sit at the bar with shoulders hunched, if he never stopped coming here, but simply stopped talking about it.
Keeping this first love, this link to his past, as a private retreat. Removed from even her, when they were together.
"Couldn't sleep?" Tom asks, when she stops just two meters shy of the bar.
"Seems to be going around," she sighs.
He considers the liquid in his tumbler as though the cause of his insomnia lies at the bottom of the glass.
"It took me two weeks to learn how to sleep with sunshine and moonlight streaming through my window," he admits. "And now that it's gone, I'm not sure how I ever slept without it."
She lets go of a ragged breath as he pushes the stool next to him out with his leg. Even as he offers her the seat, he doesn't look at her, and she isn't sure whether she should take the invitation or leave him to his apparent unrest.
He doesn't push her one or way the other, giving her no apparent sign. But after weighing her options, she decides she'd rather stay here, in this bar filled with ghosts, than return home to her empty quarters.
When she's settled in the stool, he leans over the bar, producing another tumbler and a bottle of whiskey. He pours her about two fingers, replacing the dust covered bottle before he resumes his perch next to her.
She sips the liquid slowly, feeling the burn of real alcohol fill her mouth, and decides to savor the sensation for a minute before turning her mind over to the inevitable analysis of how the liquor was produced. Given the bottle's appearance, it's obviously part of the program, not something he brought with him from his quarters. Sitting in the empty bar, she tries to turn off the part of her brain that spins out worries from this new revelation.
"You overrode the replicator safeguards in the holodeck," she says, though not sounding disappointed or even upset.
"No," he says slowly, and after sipping his own whiskey. "They were disabled by fluke accident. Didn't realize it until I went to pour myself a night cap."
She searches her memories, trying to remember any ship-wide event that coincides with the appearance of his stash of real alcohol.
"When the holodeck parameters malfunctioned," he supplies, seeing her come up empty. "We only paid attention to Fair Haven since it was running. . . And holding us captive. But I did some poking around later. . . Realized that a few baseline subroutines were damaged."
Her expression is one of surprise. The events he's citing were roughly four years prior, much earlier than she would have expected.
"So, you did some poking and. . . found the loop hole?" she asks tentatively.
"No," he repeats, returning to his previous statement. "I found the loop hole by accident and then did some poking to figure out how it happened." He continues, looking around at the beer taps and bottles on display, "it's only in this program. . . And apparently only the Irish whiskey."
A dark smile appears on her face here. The thought occurring to her that it's all seemingly appropriate.
"Does anyone else know?" she asks.
"I'm the only one who uses the program anymore," he says, though not sounding at all sad about this. "So, it's kind of been my little secret. . . Admittedly, when Miral came, I told Mike. Decided if anyone deserved to have a real drink, it's a man dealing with Klingon temper tantrums."
She rubs her face at this, a small chuckle breaking free as she considers what Tom's conversation with B'Elanna's rather stoic husband must have been like.
"I should she really tell Tuvok about his," she says eventually, and as though she's trying to convince herself rather than warning him.
He shrugs, regarding her for a brief time before diverting his gaze once more.
"The replicator loop hole has been around for years," he points out casually. "And despite a certain pilot passing out whiskey on occasion, everyone has shown up sober for their shifts and nothing seems to have fallen apart."
Tom's words remind her of something Chakotay said once in jest, and though there a dozen angles she should consider in making this decision, she sets it all aside for the night.
When the conversation drifts to an end, she considers challenging him to a game of pool, but dismisses the thought almost out of hand. The idea of doing something adversarial with Tom will bring more discomfort than nostalgia to her at this point, not to mention the many unfortunate metaphors regarding games that spring to mind as she sits beside him.
"We never talked about Justin," he says. And this time, she allows her surprise that he's raising the subject (again) to show.
She reaches over the bar to fill the glasses they've already drained, and as she does it, he considers the possibility that she's simply stalling before she changes the subject or shoots him down once more. She places the bottle on the bar rather than replacing it, and after taking two long sips, she puts down the glass and looks at him.
"When Mark and I got together, we didn't talk about it," she begins to explain. "He was there for the aftermath. . . Saw me in pieces. But he never pushed me talk about it, and at some point it just became a taboo subject."
He doesn't ask any questions. Surprised and grateful that they're having this conversation, even if they're having it too late. And as she looks at him, her face honest and open for the first time in a way he's yet to see, he meets her gaze without blinking. Willing to take whatever she'll offer. Willing to give whatever she'll allow him to.
"After that, I stopped talking about it with anyone. . . I think my sister worried when that happened, but other people, officers. . . your father. . . seemed relieved. I decided it was easier if I left it behind, never looked back."
"Easier for who?" he asks softly.
"Everyone," she breathes. "Or maybe just me. . . I don't know anymore."
He considers the weight of her confession as she ducks her head and sips her whiskey. Not forcing eye contact, he turns his gaze to his own glass, though the liquid filling it has now lost its appeal.
"Hard to tell when not looking back becomes running away," he muses out loud, and taking stalk of his own painful past.
She doesn't reply at first, parsing out competing thoughts while he waits.
"Funny thing about running," she says, turning to face him and looking rueful, "no matter how far you go, you tend to end up right back where you started."
He lets out a sigh at this, but covers her hand with his own just the same.
"When you ending things. . . It wasn't just about what my father said to you- our relationship jeopardizing your objectivity?"
It comes out as half statement, half question, even though he already knows the answer. But perhaps he needs to her say out loud. Confirm for him that leaving wasn't just one of the thousands of command decisions she's had to make since the Caretaker's array.
"I told myself it was," she admits. "And I would be lying if I said that fear wasn't tied up in it. . . But seeing you bleeding in Sickbay. Being on the bridge on and hearing that one of you had been shot during that hostage crisis. . . I promised myself once that I would never feel that kind of fear again. "
"You were in love after Justin," he says now , letting himself push her just a little.
"Mark is a philosopher," she reminds him. "I suspect part of the allure of our relationship was that I never had to worry about him coming back to Earth safely."
It's a thought that's honestly never occurred to him before, and he wonders when it was that it first struck Kathryn.
"When you told me in my quarters that it was because of your command, were you telling me a convenient lie?" he probes.
"Maybe partly," she allows. "Though I don't think I quite realized how much of my fear was personal until you asked me about Justin at the wedding."
He isn't sure to say this last confession, knowing firsthand how thorough the fog of self-deception can be. Especially when it's paired with remarkable stubbornness.
She isn't sure what to make of his lack of reply this time, and pushing through the worry that her words have unleashed some new anger in him, she clings to the strength that she feels dwindling within her.
"I'm sorry I hurt you, Tom. I'm sorry that I made you feel that what he had. . . how much we loved each other didn't matter to me. I walked out because I was terrified, not because you weren't enough. Maybe it was that it was too much. . . "
She holds his gaze as she makes her apology. And when she finishes speaking, seeing her own pain echoed on his fair features, she thinks that no room, no two people, should be able to physically contain this much hurt.
He lets go of her hand, angling his body away from her and back to the bar, and abruptly she feels bereft at the loss of proximity.
"Loved?" he asks, and in a tone that betrays no emotion. "Your feelings for me are in the past tense?"
She closes her eyes at the question, thinking the confession he's demanding an impossible one for her to give. Remembering, too, his own confession in the mess hall, several months earlier; his admission that he still loved her paired with the desperate desire to banish her from his thoughts.
Standing on the precipice of her own hesitation, she decides that isn't possible for her to hurt anymore than she already does.
"Never past," she says, her voice breaking and her eyes remaining tightly shut. "I kept telling myself it would just take time. . . But months keep going by, and we've now been apart longer than we were together. And yet I still miss you so much that it hurts to look at you. I wake up in the middle of the night to reach for you, even though you haven't been next to me for a year."
She doesn't voice the thought that while sharing her life with someone who loved her so powerfully was a kind of salvation, living with this love that refuses to fade is her own personal damnation. But this, along with the feeling that it's a hell she thinks she deserves, is made clear by the tortured sound of her voice. The way the agony drips off of her, flowing as though it had never been hidden under a controlled façade.
Her eyes open in time to see him push back from the bar, the sound of the stool scraping on the floor echoing loudly in the empty room. She chokes back tears, fighting to inhale the oxygen that suddenly refuses to fill her lungs as recoils at the thought that he's leaving, after all she's said.
Her head is already spinning from panic when his arms go around her, and for a second she thinks that she's blacked out or hit her head. Certain that this feeling of him, pulling her flush against his torso as he soothes her, pressing kisses into her shoulder and her hair, must not be real.
When his lips make contact with the side of her neck, the intense spark of his flesh touching hers brings into focus every one of her senses. She leans into his touch, a quiet gasp escaping from her lips.
"How is it possible that touching you still feels this good?" he murmurs, kissing her neck again as she pushes up from her chair.
She's beyond the point of answering him, lost in the solid feel of his body and the very real scent of him that now mixes with the smell of salt water facsimile in her nostrils. And standing there, both of them unmoving for what seems like an hour, she thinks that she wants to stay just like this all night.
She changes her mind when his hands begin moving up and down her body, slowly, and the same way they traced the helm when Voyager's repairs were completed. An intoxicating mix of reverence and familiarity, though neither one dampening his open desire.
"Oh, god," he gasps, when his hands slip underneath her shirt.
It's minutes later, when she's finally facing him and he has her pinned between the bar and his body, that rational thought returns to her in any measure.
"In the holodeck?" she asks, dragging her mouth away from his.
Something about the way she says it tells him it's not out of the question, and so he presses himself into her, nuzzling her face so that his mouth is directly over ear.
"I have fond memories of the pool table," he whispers huskily. "But I think we can make better ones."
Even as he feels the breath catching in the chest that heaves against his, she pushes against him until they're both shuffling toward the surface in question; their journey slow, distracted by the myriad of sensations they relish in as they make their way across the room.
. . . . .
Entering the holodeck, she is enveloped by sunshine; greenery and trees spreading out far as the eye can see. Yet, for all the splendor of the scenery, Kathryn's mood droops a little, the archway disappearing behind her.
She had been so excited when she found the PADD that Tom was working, months earlier. The part of the holocode she could actually read revealing a program of the Scottish Highlands. The river, barely visible from where she now stands, sprawling out majestically in her mind.
It was only upon the program's completion, Tom proudly leading her to the holodeck, that she realized the truth. Tom's newest passion is not Scotland, but golf. And all the breathtaking detail he rendered so beautifully of the blue Scottish sky, and everything that stretches below it, was for this.
A golf course.
As she approaches where Tom stands, judiciously choosing a driver from his bag, she tucks her hands into her leather jacket with an inward sigh. She promised him last month that she would more tolerant of his newest hobby, and coming into his line of sight, she swallows her nostalgia for the garage program. And even for Captain Proton.
"Hi, gorgeous," he smiles, pulling out his selected club. "How was your day?"
She mulls through her shift on the bridge, deliberately picking a topic that will hold his attention even here.
"Well, let's see," she begins, looking up at a passing holographic cloud, "I had some coffee. Read a few reports. . . Watched as your god-daughter threw up on my chair."
"In your quarters?" he asks, immediately freezing.
"On the bridge," she corrects, putting weight behind her words.
"What on earth was Miral doing on the bridge?" he exclaims, his current project momentarily forgotten.
"I told B'Elanna to report to me at once," she says ruefully.
"And she didn't tell you she had Miral?"
"She was in the turbolift when I commed. She tried to tell me, and I cut her off."
Her tone is one of both regret and dark humor, and Tom begins to laugh, picturing the engineer charging up to Deck One, child in tow.
"So she just went up there with Miral- reporting as ordered?"
"Yes," she confirms. "Only your god-daughter happened to be feeling ill, and long story short, she ended up vomiting on my chair. . . To B'Elanna's relief, I wasn't in it at the time."
Silently, Tom thinks that perhaps it was the opposite of relief B'Elanna felt over it being an empty chair; given that she'd just been summoned to the bridge while her child was sick. But he knows better than to voice this thought, staying safely on the sidelines of any minor scuffles that occur between the two women who remain as willful as they are close.
"Why is it," he says, now beginning to practice his swing, "that whenever Miral does something like take her first step or say her first word, she's your god-daughter? But when she does something like have a tantrum or, I don't know, throw up on the bridge, she's my god-daughter?"
Tom's challenging smile is quickly mirrored by Kathryn's. She rocks back on her heels for effect, squinting in the artificial sunlight.
"I think that answer is rather obvious, don't you?" she taunts, earning her a headshake from her lover.
As he returns his attention to club in his hand, Kathryn ticks away the moments as her patience begins to fizzle. This is the last hole in the Inverness course, and though not the most challenging (or so she's been informed by Tom), he's had a lot of trouble making it onto the green with his drive.
"Your father had lunch with my mother in Indiana last week," she informs him, her impatience getting the best of her as he continues swinging, but not hitting the ball.
"Yeah?" he asks, not looking up.
"Apparently they chatted for hours."
He chuckles at this before rehearsing the drive once more.
"You just know that they sat there planning a wedding," he remarks. "Picking out invitation styles and table linens."
At this, she pauses, looking at him with new interest.
"Do you want that?" she asks cautiously, and a smirk she doesn't see appears on his face.
"Table linens?" he queries innocently.
"A wedding," she corrects, sounding frustrated. He ceases his practice, leaning on the driver in his hands.
"I want to be married to you, if that's what you're asking. . . The wedding I could take or leave."
She smiles at him, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand.
"I'd want my family there. Yours, too," she says seriously, to which he shrugs.
"So we wait until we get home. It won't be much longer."
Despite that it's been ten years, they are all, more than ever, convinced that they'll get home soon. Starfleet continues to make technological advances every month. Voyager's crew still looks, as they always have, for wormholes and spatial rifts that would shorten their journey.
Their goal, however, is no longer a desperate, all-consuming need. They are optimistic about the future, still longing for the friends and loved ones who await them in the Alpha Quadrant. But they do so while enjoying what they the lives and love they have around them. And for this lesson, they try to remain grateful. They could have drowned, they know, in their desire to get home; choking on the fear of losing what they had before. But instead, they find themselves floating in both the joy of what they have and the patient expectation of what awaits.
"My mother's a traditionalist," Kathryn declares, crossing her arms. "She's going to want me to wear one of those ridiculous dresses. You have to back me up when I refuse."
"That's fine," he agrees. "But I want an open bar."
"What is it with you and bars?" she teases, coming close to where he stands. "You don't even like them."
"You picked me up in a bar. Two bars, actually. . . So I tend to think they've been pretty good to me so far," he grins.
Her defiant expression remains, her hands moving to her hips.
"One bar I'm willing to say I proposition you in. And even then, it was a holographic one, and I'm pretty sure it was mutual. The first one on Letara- that one you picked me up in."
"Really? Because I'm pretty sure I remember you draping yourself over me before we left. "
"That was out of pity," she shakes her head. "Maybe even duty. Either way, it doesn't count."
It's the same argument they always have, only they never finish it.
"Besides," she continues, and despite the fact that he's smiling at her, "it was you who-"
Before she can finish her sentence, he kisses her. The sun shining down on them, and the sound of the river faint in the distance. When he pulls away from her, she can't remember what they were talking about.
"You should hurry up," she says, running her finger down his shirt suggestively. "The faster you finish this hole, the faster we can go home."
Hearing her voice drop an octave, he doesn't hesitate before lining up his drive again and swinging through to the ball.
When their eyes find the small white orb in the light of the afternoon, they see that he's hit a perfect drive. Straight and beautiful, and headed, as planned, toward the center of the green. Until a sudden gust of wind takes it, hooking it off course, directly into one of the course's water traps.
As Tom turns away with disappointment and Kathryn follows with stifled amusement, the ball lingers for a moment at the top of the water, before gliding gracefully down, into the depths beneath.
For Josephine. And Ilsa. And the woman waiting patiently for me on a porch, a glass of wine in hand. - C.