Note: Dialogue and setting in first section from Kirsten Beyer's Isabo's Shirt. Everything in between, my additions. No infringement intended.
~~C~~
As we sit by the water on a deserted street in Venice, the tears flowing freely down her face are shocking to witness. Stunning.
Heart-wrenching.
"After I lost Justin, I never expected to feel what I felt for him with another man. And I didn't, not even with Mark. I could accept that. Love doesn't always have to be an overwhelming force of nature to be worth building a life around."
If I could tell her how sad it makes me to hear her say that, I would. But this is her story. It's her heartbreak. It's not my place to interrupt her until she's done.
"But then I met you. The way you make me feel…the things that move in me whenever I let myself imagine what we could have…it isn't a safe love…a love I can control. It's the other kind."
It's my admission. My concrete admission. I haven't been chasing after self-serving phantoms of smiles for the past few years: it's mutual. I'm not crazy.
"It's what I had with Justin. I lost that once. It wasn't my fault, and it still almost destroyed me. That's what I'd be risking, for a soft place to rest my head at night. So you tell me. You still think it's worth the risk, while I'm trying to get this ship home?"
What the hell can I say to that? To any of it?
She isn't done yet. Raw emotion like I've rarely seen from her is making her whole body shake as the tears start to choke her, almost best her. "I'm not saying never…I'm saying…not now. Not until I'm no longer responsible for your life."
Which might be…never.
After the hopes I've built these past few days over the bonding box – the kiss we just shared that shattered all illusions that she doesn't feel the same way about me. Or couldn't, if she let herself.
It would be so easy to lean forward. To kiss her senseless again, and to press the advantage she's just given me. Right now, she's the weakest I've ever seen her, the most open, and I could take advantage of it in any number of ways. Use it to gain the upper hand, to plant seeds of doubts in herself, in her judgment, and not to let her take what I'd deluded myself into thinking she was giving in that bonding box sitting so accusingly on the table beside us.
Doing any of that would destroy her, even if it temporarily saved me.
Now I finally know. I know what I am to her, why she sat mutely, smiled so placidly back at me the few times I dared to drop heavy hints of how I feel about her. She just admitted she knows what we can be. That she knows there's no force going to stop us if I work into that opening she's just lowered her shields long enough to show me by admitting what I do to her. What I could do to her. And, as usual with her, it's somehow humbling, heart-ripping, soul-shredding, all at the same time.
It would be so easy to throw all her fear, her exposed, subconscious blockers right back in her face. I'm that hurt, that sorry to have my hope for us ripped out of me. Bitter, hurt words would flow from my tongue like poisoned honey if I let them. If I opened my mouth and let them. It would be easy to hurt her the way that she's hurting me, to focus on that part of the story she's told, and only that part. To ignore the personal truth underlying it as it relates to her and what she feels she's capable of.
It's far from easy to do what I have to do right now. In fact, it's the hardest thing I've prepared to do since gazing at my scorched homeworld on a cold shuttle view screen for the first time after its destruction. But doing any less can only prove I don't really love her, ensure that I don't deserve an ounce of the trust or faith she just placed in me. If I know her the way I think I do, there are maybe two or three people she's ever told that story to. That she ever revealed this level of vulnerability to.
I get it now. Finally, completely, get it. And I almost wish to high hell that I didn't.
I'm still no damned better at talking about how I feel. I swallow hard, just the once. Do what I have to do. Finally, I'm able to reach for her hand. "There's a legend among my people…"
Through drying tears, her eyebrow quirks at me right away, stopping me. "Is this a real legend?" she accuses gently.
Normally, I let her caustic humor distract me when she wants it to, thinks she needs it to. Not today.
"This one is, I promise. I never really understood it until now." No. I didn't. And I wish to every spirit in the galaxy that I still didn't. But I make myself tell her the story. I just hope my voice holds out for it – because my heart threatens not to. "A warrior loved a woman called Isabo…"
~~J~~
"First contact?" I probe after entering sickbay, trying not to internalize the sight of Chakotay talking to beings that aren't here in the background. At least…not in the sense that he's taking it. It's far from easy to ignore, however, even when turning away from him.
The doctor seems adamant. "It was brief, but he definitely communicated with them."
"Rentrillic trajectory," I repeat, turning the words over in my mind. It sounds made up, and the doctor apparently has no more idea what it means than I do.
"Unfortunately, they never got around to explaining what that meant."
Of course they didn't. But it sounds closest to some kind of course heading, if anything. "Could be some sort of alien geometry, but we'll need much more." I glance over at Chakotay. He's chasing phantoms that aren't there, feinting and ducking blows that don't exist and it, quite frankly, scares the hell out of me. "Is it safe for him to try to make contact again?" I ask the doctor.
If it isn't, do I have a choice anyway?
"Medically speaking, yes," the doctor assures – which is not the same tune he was singing a few hours ago, when we started this half-baked plan. "The problem is convincing the commander of that."
Meaning he's not having any luck. Meaning I'm the one who has to try to convince him. Wonderful.
This is exactly why what's easy was never what we could have.
It's a personal failing: a weakness I possess that might not apply between us if the situation was reversed, and he was the one in charge. I know it, but that doesn't make it any less real or less dangerous. It doesn't change what is, or what must be.
It just makes fate a cruel bitch, but that was never something I was altogether deluded about.
What I have to ask of him now is far from easy. His greatest fear, and now, thanks to the doctor, one of mine for him, is what I now have to ask him to risk.
It strikes me for a discordant, jarring instant how similar this is to a necessarily forgotten interlude in a holodeck only a few months ago. An interlude in which he asked the same of me, to risk my greatest fear, and then sat back and supported me like the true and cherished friend he is when I had to hurt him. When I denied his request.
The difference is that this is for the ship. He has to do what I'm about to ask of him for the ship, just as I had to refuse his request for the same reason.
As his friend, this is far from easy, yes. I risk losing my closest, most trusted counsel, my better command half to possible permanent madness. Perhaps even death. We have no idea what chaotic space might do to him, to his mind. The doctor admitted as much earlier and watching him now, he certainly looks close enough to madness already.
As his lover, with his personal fears shining raw and vulnerable in his so-dark eyes, all but begging me not to ask it of him, this would be impossible.
Yet if I don't ask him to risk himself, we may all be lost and those aren't statistics I can ever accept as captain.
He'll understand later, if this all works out – if luck stands behind us one more time. He'll look at me from across this same sickbay bed, or perhaps across the dinner table as we try to choke down my burnt food, and he will smile. With his hand on my shoulder, or reassuringly patting my hand, he will tell me that I did the right thing.
That only makes it harder. But not impossible.
I steel myself quickly, approach him and take his powerful arms in my ice-cold hands. "I realize you're frightened, but you're our only hope out of this place." He shakes his head frantically, only half hearing me, and I lower my head, chasing his eye-line, speaking as slowly and as convincingly as I can. "You think this could risk your sanity – but your sanity won't do you any good if we remain in Chaotic space. I need you to keep trying, Chakotay." I hate that I do, but it's true. He's our only shot at getting out of here. "Will you keep trying?" I ask.
For me, can you do this? Please?
He stares at me, his eyes wide and wild. Pained and afraid. For a heart-stopping moment, I think he might refuse…
He nods. It's not easy, not by a long shot and I know it, but he nods. For me he will.
The pat I give him, the single concerned and grateful glance is all I can afford him in return.
"Keep me posted," I order the doctor on my way back to my falling-apart bridge.
He'll understand why I couldn't even stay to help him, to talk and encourage him through it. Damn him – he'll understand. Even if I'm not always so sure that I do.
~~JC~~