Forgotten Memories
by: AW
Pairing: J/M, J/C
Rating: K
Date: September 1999
Length: 2257 words
Summary: Kathryn had forgotten, but eventually she remembers.
Disclaimer: The characters and the episodes belong to Paramount Pictures, but the story is mine.
Some say love
It is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love
It is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love
It is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love
It is a flower
And you it's only seed
Kathryn sat by the gravestone. It had been not that long ago she had stared at the star charts wondering just how far away home really was. In their sixth year in the Delta Quadrant - not long after her ordeal with the Equinox and her crew - she had met her husband. Or he had been her husband, it was no longer the case and now she bore the marks and the rings of a widow, a woman whose love was forever overshadowed by something darker, but something so much stronger.
She had met Benaigh at a trade conference. She had been bartering for much needed Dilithium. She had succeeded; her price had been a good deal higher than his. She had met him afterwards, apologizing and hoping that she would not be impeding important things needed by his people. He had assured her no, and a torrid love affair had ensued. In the beginning, she had thought it only sex. A woman deprived for many a year, stuck far from home, abandoned by a fiancé long ago and far away. Then she had fallen in love. She had loved as she had never loved anyone before, only there was always something more, something else there.
She had married him a mere three months after meeting him, and when getting to know him better, with pillow talk or just intimate chatter, she had learned of his shortened life span. Like the Ocampa, he lived a maximum number of years, much less than that of a human or any other Alpha Quadrant species. Kathryn had thought she would die with him. She had thought she could not live without him, but every time she considered it all, one face kept popping up.
She was ashamed for the face her dreams wore was not that of her 'love' and her 'soul mate' and her husband but that of a man long forgotten or so she had thought. Benaigh loved her, she was sure of that and out of the relationship he had gotten all he wanted, her on the other hand, had cheated life. Where most thrive to cheat death, Kathryn Janeway had striven to cheat life.
The day her ship, the Voyager was decommissioned, she felt her life unravel, and on that day the Captain was decommissioned as well. She had lost her husband, grown distant from her best friends and unwittingly given away her livelihood. She missed him and all he represented, but more than that...she missed her. The Kathryn she had been, as opposed to the Kathryn she had become.
It's the heart
Afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
Kathryn sat at the gravestone; she had been there for hours. It seemed in those hours she had seen her life flash before her eyes. She had watched her life with Benaigh play out. She remembered...
About three months after her marriage to him, he had brought up the subject of children, she had been enthusiastic, she had been excited and for the first time in a long time she had been alive. They had tried for six months before she had gone to the doctor in the hopes of finding out if it was her that was flawed. Her family doctor had given her the longest physical she had ever had. She had felt as if she had been probed and poked in every possible crevice. She felt as if every fluid in her body had been drained at least once. She felt as if every inch of her body had been explored. In the end...Kathryn had been sent home with the news that children just weren't in her future. It seemed that years of Starfleet service, exposure to toxins and radiation, one too many blows to one too many places and just plain bad health during her years in the Delta Quadrant on top of age, had left the great Kathryn Janeway infertile.
When she had arrived at home after all, she had not had the heart to tell her loving husband; so keen on the idea of the pitter-patter of little feet that she would not be able to bear him the children he so wanted and needed.
It's the dream
Afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
She recalled the day he told her he was dying, the day he told her his life was drawing to a close, she remember his words...
"Kathryn, I know. I know what happened that day. I know you went to the doctor, I know you could never give me the children I thought I wanted...but I just wanted you to know, before God takes me, that I realized that one day with you was worth so much more than a thousand children. And I never blamed you, I only loved you. That was my only crime and if that was a crime, I am happy to pay the consequences.
It's the one
Who won't be taken
Who cannot learn to give
And the soul
Afraid of dying
That never learns to live
Kathryn took off the bracelet she has worn since the day she had left Voyager and she had been permitted the luxury of wearing jewelery. It was a charm bracelet, a bracelet, which represented her loves and her life...or so, she thought. For every love gone awry the bracelet held a charm, a reminder of loves come and gone and lives passed. The first one was for Justin, until then she had never really loved. It was a charm of a lock, each of her lovers held a meaning to her. Justin held her secrets, he was her brace, her strength, and it was the gift he had given her.
She had shared most of her stories with Benaigh, Justin she had never held away from him, he was not a threat, a dead fiancé, forever buried...
When the night
Has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
Then there was Mark. She thought some days she had loved him more out of loneliness and safety than anything else. Kathryn had always felt Mark was her best friend, and in some ways this made him a good lover. But he was not as passionate as others she had loved, he was not Justin, and so he held her trust and friendship. For him there was a locket that was a key to the lock Justin had held. She had never felt more comfortable with anyone she had ever met. He had the key...if he had ever asked her to open the door, she would have without a second thought.
He was not a threat either. A lost memory of a lover who had moved on...
And you think
That love is only
For the lucky and the strong
The third locket had been a musical note, a counterpoint to Mahler's symphony number six. She had never told Benaigh of the real significance of the charm, just that his name had been Kashyk and he had been a short-lived mistake. The stories of the Delta Quadrant she had avoided, and he had not pushed.
Just remember
In the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed
That with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose
The final locket had been of a rose. It had been an exact replica of the one Chakotay had given her after her death experience on the shuttle. It was a symbol of her love for him. It was a memory she did not want to drudge up, and she had never mentioned. To Benaigh, this had been one secret he had let her keep. This was one love she had not shared, and this was one locket that was forever silenced.
She called for a beam out; she beamed the gold bracelet into the grave of her late husband. Her love for him and all before was over. She let a silent tear run down her cheek and learned to forget...
Chakotay had been watching the funeral from a ways away. From a distance, he had watched as Kathryn had suffered a loss greater than he could ever imagine.
He remembered the years they had been apart, as well as the years they had shared. He remembered being on Voyager and the flings he had had. God, what had he done...Seska, Riley Frazier, Kellin...finally that species 8472...why? Why had he done this to her, to himself...
He wanted to go to her, he needed to go to her, but he wasn't sure if he could.
*Kathryn...it's been too long.*
Kathryn thought about her loves long lost. How had she lived so long without Chakotay? How had she married another man with Chakotay still in the area? Simple answer...fear. They had skirted around happiness and the fulfillment of dreams, but never actually reached that point. She missed him, he had always been her best friend and would always be the best friend she had ever had. She wished all those years ago when the decision had been presented to her...Chakotay or Benaigh, she had chosen the former, rather than the latter. She didn't regret marrying Benaigh, not really, he had provided her with two years of happiness and an escape from loneliness, but she still wished she had spent more time getting to know Chakotay...getting to know him in a more personal sense anyway.
*Oh Chakotay, what have I done?*
She let the tears flow.
Chakotay watched her, watched her fall to her knees, and watched her cover her tear-stained face. *I love you Kathryn.*
It had been a while since he had thought those thoughts. Over the years he had let himself think he could get on. He had let himself think he could find happiness in someone else, but in the end, he had found nothing but misery.
He had been devastated when Kathryn had married Benaigh; devastated when the choice had come to pass that she had not chosen him. As long as she had held him at arms length because of Starfleet, or protocol, he had been able to deal with it. When she had refused him love for someone else, he had no longer been able to cheat himself, to make himself think it was nothing. So on that day they had returned to the Alpha Quadrant, he had disappeared and never met her again.
But today, on her day of sorrow, he could do nothing but go to her, lost love reunited...or not.
He watched her for the first time in more than a year. His legs started moving, he couldn't stop them, and he had had to go to her. He called out to her.
"Kathryn..."
Kathryn reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She slowly got up and began to walk away, walk away from her life...every part of it. She heard the wind whisper her name, and turned to see a figure in the distance slowly moving towards her.
They looked familiar, like a long forgotten friend. A memory started to re-surface at the back of her brain, a memory whose importance was still not clear to her, but she knew, deep in herself that it was important.
Chakotay saw her stand and turn around, looking straight at him through haunted eyes. Eyes of one who has suffered and cannot quite get the images of the horror out of their minds. Gods Kathryn, what has life done to you? Gone was the woman he had once known, replaced by a woman whose life had been stolen.
Someone had stolen her memories...
Kathryn walked, her pace quickening as the spark of life, deep within her made itself known. Then she realized...
*Chakotay?*
Chakotay closed the last distance and looked her over. She had let her hair grow out, she looked older, time had not been kind to her, but she was still Kathryn Janeway, and to him that still made her the most beautiful woman in the world.
He opened his arms and...
...she let him envelop her in a hug. In the intimate contact she had craved from him all these years. She felt the weight being lifted from her, and she felt her lifeblood coming back. Kathryn had resurfaced and the memories had re-asserted themselves. *I love you.*
Chakotay looked at her and decided to voice the opinions and the statements they had not been allowed to voice over the years, but which they both needed to say to make them complete. "I love you."
He watched Kathryn cry, this time not tears of sorrow, but rather tears of joy. "I love you too, never leave me again."
They left together and life was never the same, but only better. Memories stolen by time, cruel and unyielding and returned by love strong and sweet.
Just remember
In the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed
That with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose
THE END
The song is 'The Rose' by Bette Midler