The Opportunity to Be Fully Human
Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.
Chapter 5
Kathryn awakened to the awareness of a hand gently resting on her arm.
"Chakotay!" she half-whimpered, struggling to push herself into a seated position.
"No, Captain, it's me. The Doctor." The Doctor's voice, calm and faintly tinged with embarrassment. He had his hands on her shoulders now and was lightly pressing her back into the surface beneath. Kathryn peered towards the sound of his voice and saw the familiar face, worry creased between his eyes.
"Oh, Doctor. I'm sorry. The last thing I remember was being on the bridge and…" She broke off.
"It's quite all right, Captain," he answered with forced joviality. "But please, lay back and relax. I just finished treating you. Your body started rejecting the remaining Borg implants and attacking them. I have suppressed your immune response for the moment. You also suffered a concussion when you hit your head on the bridge so you may be experiencing some mild dizziness and a headache." Kathryn unconsciously pinched the bridge of her nose, almost testing to see if she did indeed have a headache. Not much of one, she discovered, just a dull throb that centered above her left eye.
"I'm fine," she said and almost laughed. How easy it was to slip back into her old ways.
"Yes, I'm sure you are," the Doctor replied, staring at her curiously. She realized she was grinning and the discovery made her laugh out loud. "Captain? Are you feeling all right?" He was scanning her with the tricorder, his lips pursed. Kathryn's laughter ceased as abruptly as it had begun. What did it say about her life, about what she portrayed to the people around her, if the Doctor became concerned about the state of her health just because she was amused? Sudden tears sprang to her eyes, and an impending sense of hopelessness fell over her like the last grasping wave of the ocean tide.
"Yes, thank you, Doctor." Her voice was husky. The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but she held up her hand. "Really. I'm okay." She reassured him with a wry half-smile, and he backed down immediately. Uncharacteristically. Some part of her wondered if her complete breakdown in his presence the other day might even work to her advantage. Perhaps the fear of making her cry would act as a deterrent to his lectures and biting comments, at least temporarily. At least, until she started acting like her old self again.
No. Not her old self. She had promises to keep. She simply hoped that in time, there would be less tears to share and more smiles.
In time.
The Doctor sighed. "Well, Captain, I am releasing you to your quarters. However, you are strictly off bridge duty for the next three days. You can read PADDs and reports all you want—as long as you stay in bed." Kathryn smothered a half-hysterical giggle behind her hand. The EMH had never been so accommodating since the day he had been activated in the Delta Quadrant.
"Yes, sir," she said with a mock salute. Then she slipped off the biobed, straightening her uniform. At the door, she paused and the question took her mouth hostage before she could even pull herself together to negotiate.
"Doctor," she said uncertainly. "Commander Chakotay. Did he…" She trailed off, feeling hot shame flare across her face.
There was regret in his eyes. "No, Captain, I'm sorry. He didn't."
She nodded, shoulders slumping, and walked quickly and quietly back to her quarters where she lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling for a very long time.
**********
When she awoke again, hours later, she remained sprawled across the bed, feeling her breath exit and enter her body, feeling the crushing weight of her heart against her spine. She somehow always forgot and then marveled at how dramatically emotions grabbed hold of the physical body and made the two one, the heart sharing the pain at least with its own tabernacle if there was no one else to commiserate with. One question beat a single tattoo across her soul, pounding mercilessly with every heartbeat.
Where did she go from here?
If there was one thing that she knew, it was that you either learned from your experiences or you didn't. Which was somehow more complicated than it sounded. Learning required active participation. The learning part only happened when you were ready to look honestly at your life, look honestly at the things that were happening on a daily basis, and make some kind of decision.
Mainly—is what I'm doing, is what I'm achieving what I really want? Is it turning me into who I really want to be?
Have I found peace?
Kathryn Janeway was an honest woman. Sometimes a coward, she was realizing, but honest nonetheless. There were many things that she had achieved in the last few years in the Delta Quadrant. But when it came down to the bottom line, were they all things she wanted to achieve?
She knew the answer to that question as surely as she knew her name, and it made her want to cry all over again.
In some ways she had become more similar to the Borg than she cared to admit. As the captain of Voyager, who had by now totally eclipsed the woman who was Kathryn, she projected a certain image, a certain message to her crew. She had to. It was the only way to get them home. It was the only way to keep herself sane. At least, that's what she had been telling herself for six years.
I am the captain. Resistance is futile. We will make it home. We will not falter, we will not surrender, we will not cry. All feelings of despair, loneliness, hopelessness will be assimilated into emotional oblivion.
But she did sometimes feel despair. Hopelessness tended to overwhelm her when she least expected it. And there was no denying that she was lonely every moment of every day.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
She was the one who kept them at arm's length and sometimes even longer. She was the one who thought she had to be larger than life in order for them to believe in her. She was the one—and probably the only one—who thought they couldn't handle seeing her as someone human.
And when it came to Chakotay, sometimes she couldn't handle being human. She couldn't handle being as close as they were so she pushed him away even further. She couldn't handle hurting or disappointing him so she lashed out at him even more. She couldn't handle him losing confidence in her so she blindly made decisions of which she knew he would disapprove.
She couldn't handle the thought of ever losing him. So she made sure he was never hers in the first place.
But he was hers. And she was his. Their souls were woven around one another so intricately that their lives had been bound since the day he had beamed over to her bridge.
She didn't want to deny what he had done to her these past few days. She was through with denying her feelings just so she could get through the next day, through the next battle. She was done with hiding behind the captain.
But what did it mean for her and Chakotay? That she would stay angry at him for the rest of the journey and possibly for the rest of their lives?
No. That wasn't it.
Being fully human meant taking risks.
It meant not always being right.
It meant
feeling
loving
and, she realized with an aching heart,
forgiving.
He had stood by her all these years, even when her words, her actions, were specifically designed to knock him down. It was her turn to wait by his side no matter how his emotional storm buffeted her.
It was her turn to forgive.