CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Kathryn pulled herself away from him abruptly. Her eyes had suddenly deep shadows in them and she tried to avert his gaze. Chakotay let her be, watching her as she got up from the bed and pulled her robe around her. He sighed. No doubt the satin robe had been something he had replicated for her but couldn't remember. He felt again the old resentment and frustration rise in him and he tried to suppress it. He wanted to get a hold on himself, and to wallow in his frustrations was not helping. Kathryn padded to the bathroom, and when he heard the shower run, he got up too.

 

He gathered his fawn terry robe and walked to their dining area, pulling on the robe as he did so. They had not had dinner and it was already past 2200. Perhaps a light snack would restore the ambiance of earlier when, just before they resumed their lovemaking on their bed, Kathryn had been buoyant, teasing, and there had been an easy banter between them that he knew they had had before his accident. He wanted to kick himself for disturbing the mood, for finding his adjustment into her life less than smooth. She was clearly uneasy answering some of his questions that had become nagging little stabs during the day, and the headaches that resulted trying to find an opening into his damnable brain that refused to comply time after time. He didn't want her to be unhappy, but at the same time he realised that whatever he demanded of her to fill him in, could be painful memories for her too. It was important, though, that they experienced this catharsis. It served to clear some things and cleansed him and her.

 

He ordered a salad for them, knowing that Kathryn liked hers with croutons. He ordered some white wine as well. Or an impulse he replicated a single stemmed yellow rose and put in into a long flute-like vase that always remained on the small dining table. He looked up when Kathryn appeared. He hadn't heard her; she had padded again barefoot and he smiled. It was something he had to get accustomed to: Kathryn barefoot in their quarters. After tonight, most likely barefoot and naked.

 

"Is your mind in the gutter right now, Chakotay?"

 

"However did you know, Kathryn?"

 

"You get that glow in your eyes and I know we'll not get through the night without making love."

 

"Kathryn, you have the advantage over me."

 

She sat down and spread a napkin on her lap, picking up her fork and digging it into a crouton. She raised her fork; just before she popped it into her mouth, she replied:

 

"Nonsense, Chakotay. You know exactly when I'm ready for you."

 

"If you want to finish dinner, sweetheart, then get that smoky look out of your eyes."

 

Chakotay was glad when Kathryn smiled and they continued their dinner in silence. They had just finished, when Kathryn looked at him contemplatively. Chakotay drew in his breath. Kathryn was so beautiful, deceptively fragile, sometimes fey...

 

"You destroyed all references to New Earth from your personal logs, Chakotay," she said softly.

 

He nodded, had some sense that he had probably done that. Kathryn was ready to talk, ready to fill in another piece of the puzzle.

 

"Why, Kathryn? Why did I do it?" He gripped the stem of his glass a little tighter, feeling the tension rise in him again.

 

"Chakotay, what I'm going to say now, I want you to remember, to - to understand," she stammered slightly, "that I loved you." She gave a deep sigh, and he was alarmed suddenly when a tear rolled down her cheek. She rubbed it ineffectually away with the back of her hand, and sniffed. When he nodded, she gave a teary half smile. "Yes, I love you."

 

"What happened, Kathryn?" he asked softly, afraid to push her too much lest she bolt again.

 

"We made love for the first time on Breakfast Rock. I had been reserved, too aware still of being on Voyager, even though she was light years away. Three nights before we had a terrible storm and you - you took care of m-me..."  She was quiet a long time, staring unseeingly at some point past Chakotay's head. Then she looked at him again. "After that, you were so protective over me, so attentive to every need although I still fought it like mad... I didn't need protection and you - you just went ahead and...protected..."

 

"I guess I'm like that still?"

 

Kathryn nodded, her tears falling freely, but she smiled through them. She didn't bother to wipe her tears. "Yes...you have no idea." Then she shook her head. "There are some things about you that didn't change, Chakotay. You - you have no idea how familiar to me they are. I - I wanted do die when you c-called me 'Danaë'. You always called me that, especially whenever we were on Breakfast Rock, and most of the time I would lie there - "

 

"Naked... Like Danaë in her bronze tower. I was Jupiter, coming to you in a shower of gold..."

 

She laughed. "Yes. Exactly like that."

 

"How - how did you decide you wanted to change the -the parameters, Kathryn?"

 

"One night, you had a dream, and you called my name. There was a lost, forlorn sound about the way you called me. It was the first time that I had sensed how vulnerable you still were, how, in your dreams, it revealed itself. It was...a revelation. You said something like 'I can't anymore, Kathryn...' I couldn't get it out of my mind. It had been more than a year since you had asked me to marry you, when you said that you loved me."

 

 "I still call out your name..."

 

She nodded, continued.

 

"The next morning you were gone and I knew you had gone to Breakfast Rock. I followed you there, and when I arrived, saw you sitting there, with your cushion and blanket, and you were staring over the water that lay glistening in the sun. You didn't see me. Then.... I don't know, Chakotay, exactly how I came to it, but I knew that if you saw me, it had to be crystal clear I wanted you to know my feelings for you never changed, and that I was ready to commit myself - mind, body and soul..."

 

"So you stripped naked. That's how I saw you when I looked up?"

 

"It certainly caught your attention, sweetheart. I walked to you and - and then I kissed you. We made love..."

 

Kathryn had again that faraway look in her eyes. Chakotay had taken the last sip from his glass. He reached over the table to touch her hand. She smiled.

 

"After that, we almost never made love in our shelter, except at night, when we retired for bed."

 

"It was an idyll."

 

Her eyes filled with tears.

 

"Then one day, you were showing me the designs for a boat you were going to build for me."

 

"We received a hail, that Voyager returned for us?"

 

Kathryn nodded, swallowed at a lump in her throat. She remained silent a long time, both hands on the table. Chakotay could see how her fingers trembled. He covered one hand again; he wanted to reassure her. Kathryn pulled her hands away and got up. He scraped his chair as he too, rose, following her to the bedroom again. She sat down on the edge of the bed and when he sat down next to her, she buried her face against his chest. He touched her cheek. It felt feverish. He pressed his lips to her hair.

"It's okay, Kathryn...you don't have to say anything..."

 

"Everything changed, the minute I knew Voyager was back for us, with a cure. You - you don't know how - how happy I was, Chakotay...when I realised I had my ship back..."

 

"What happened to us?" he asked quietly,

 

"I broke your heart, Chakotay. That's what happened. I broke your heart.... I broke your heart..." Kathryn started sobbing and Chakotay waited till it subsided, caressing her hair all the time she took to becoming calm. When she composed herself again, she moved so that she could look at him. "Your face, your eyes, Chakotay, the way the sun broke into a thousand pieces and - and lay shattered at my feet..." Kathryn gave a sob. "Your eyes were what haunted me, even now."

 

"You said we couldn't continue?"

 

"I told you I didn't love you...that it was the setting that created the illusion of love. I was carried away by our magical idyll, and that was all it was. An idyll, a brief aberration that was over as soon as Voyager came within hailing range."

 

Chakotay held her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes.

 

"You were afraid. The minute Voyager assimilated you again, you became an extension no longer of New Earth, but of a vessel you referred to every time as 'my ship'. You felt you lost control for a while and that I was a good bed-warmer substitute while you were in that state?"

 

Kathryn nodded, tried to look away again, but he made her look at him.

 

"I made myself vulnerable for you, Kathryn. When we left New Earth, everything we shared drifted away into a bank of mist I couldn't see in my dreams. I woke up feeling sorrow because we didn't leave New Earth, but in your heart, you left me. That was the emptiness I felt, the deep feeling of bereftness I couldn't understand. You turned me down once, and then, you left me again. Every time it seemed, you left..."

 

"You never spoke about it afterwards. Never made yourself vulnerable again, except - except when we crashed the Sacajawea and I was dead for a few minutes."

 

"And so I destroyed all my logs because I wanted no reminder of the most beautiful and peaceful period of my life?"

 

"I only found that out after we married and I - I mentioned one day how - how sorry I was that I hurt you and let you down. You were bitter, said you didn't want to be reminded of that time. And I couldn't forget how shattered you looked when I told you I couldn't continue what he had. You were right, Chakotay. I was afraid, afraid of letting go like I did on New Earth, afraid of losing control, afraid of being seen as a Captain with a lover, afraid to let my heart rule and allowed duty and command and discipline to reign. I knew in order to do that, that I - I had to sever my ties with you as ruthlessly as I could." Kathryn looked away from him again, deeply pensive for a moment. "I hurt you, Chakotay. I hurt you deeply. You'll never know how much I regretted that, how much I regretted not following my heart..."

 

Chakotay pulled her closer again and kissed her tenderly, her lips parting instinctively under his. When he broke off the kiss, her eyes shone again and she smiled.

 

"Listen to me, Kathryn. I guess we never did speak much of our traumas, did we?" Her hand rested against his chest, and when she pushed it inside his robe, she caressed him. Sighing deeply, she nodded.  "Especially after we married, right?" She nodded again. "And I was more guilty of that..."

 

"Don't - don't punish yourself, Chakotay."

 

"No, it's just that now, Kathryn, it's different, somehow. I'm not hopeful that I'll regain my memory. Maybe it will never happen - "

 

"Chakotay - ?"

 

"Please, hear me out, sweetheart. When I regained consciousness after the accident, I didn't know who you were. I only knew the Maquis on board. I had to get to know them all over again." He smiled. "I fell in love with you again. But Kathryn, now I need all those memories you can tell me of. I need them if I am to have a semblance of normalcy in my life again. I want everything, Kathryn; I want to gather together all the dreams, the good memories, the bad ones, especially the bad memories, all of it, to make me whole again."

 

"I'll tell you, Chakotay, every time you ask, I'll tell you."

 

"Because," he continued as if he didn't hear her, "those bad memories belong to my memory bank because they too, helped to shape the man you say I became on board this vessel..."

 

"I love you, Chakotay," Kathryn breathed softly.

 

"Love of my life..." he replied. He kissed her again, then pulled her down on the bed. "The evening isn't over," he said gruffly as he removed her robe from her.

 

*** 

 

They were on the bridge the next morning, and Chakotay had been a little reflective about the previous night's revelations from her. He had been staring at the main viewscreen for endless minutes, and he was drumming his fingers on the console between them.

 

Chakotay was right, Kathryn thought. He needed all his memories, good and bad, to be all of the man she wanted back in her life. Leave out all the bad remembrances, there'd be something lacking in him. Depth, perhaps. The Chakotay of the past had loved her deeply, with all his traumas as part of his recollections and experiences, and that was what she loved about him to distraction. He loved her not in spite of what she had done to him, but because of her regrettable and shabby treatment of his feelings. The Chakotay of the present loved her as deeply, she believed. It was new, thrilling, but she needed both of them. She had been reading Keats in the holodeck last night when Chakotay came in, and sonnet 19 stood out so like a beacon of what she desired of her Chakotay as she thought of the lines:

 

"Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die..."

 

As her husband he could be complete if she had all of him, and she needed to fill those dark chambers for him so that he could achieve fullness. Her old Chakotay had understood, or tried to, the reason for her own fears, that she had fears; he tried to come to terms with the fact that they made it to a marriage bed only two years ago, more than a year after they were back on Voyager. He had been terrible after New Earth. He closed all feeling off so absolutely and succeeded so devastatingly that it shattered her. But it was her fault, and with grief she's had to live, come to terms with, even. Still, the look of desolation in his eyes haunted her all these years, even now, and she never wished to see him look like that again, not by her hand.

 

No more did Chakotay walk the corridors, giving her a friendly greeting whenever he passed her. In fact, those were the times when her heart sprang alive at the sight of him, and he would greet tersely, always, always being excessively polite and deferential, always calling her by her rank. That, more than anything else, settled the chasm between them, and established the manner in which Captain and First Officer conducted themselves away from the prying eyes of the crew. Chakotay's face became drawn, austere, and no more did he come to her quarters for dinner when she invited him, always thinking up some excuse.

 

On New Earth, after the first day, she had told him to drop the rank and call her Kathryn. She had become so accustomed to that, because no one called her by her name. To live on board a vessel for three years without ever hearing her name.... From Chakotay's lips it rolled like music. She missed that. Oh, how she missed that. The only time he showed emotion after New Earth was when she appeared on the bridge one morning, with a new hairstyle. She had her hair cut shoulder length. Gone were the long tresses she favoured in the first years. Chakotay had taken one look, his eyes flashed with anger, and an instant later she saw the pain. He had quickly recovered, said nothing and continued looking at the main viewscreen. On New Earth he loved her long hair... He loved to run his fingers through it.

 

The crew noticed. Tom Paris was the first to ask: 'What's up with the Commander, Captain?"

 

What could she tell them? How could she reveal her deepest joy and her deepest sorrow all at once to a member of her crew? She had given Chakotay entitlement. She had been his in every way: mind, body and soul. She had thrown all of it away in a mindless, juvenile display of fear that she'd lose something of herself on Voyager. For months afterwards she had dreamed of Breakfast Rock, woken up in a sweat because she thought he was in her bed with her, making love to her in the sweetest, most elemental way.

 

Kathryn smiled inwardly. She had always preferred walking around naked in the shelter on warm days. They had stripped to Eden, and wherever they walked in the forest, taking covering with them, she had lain with Chakotay and made love to him. She had no reserves, had liberated herself and shown him she was a woman with the same needs as every woman; she had shown him she could embrace her new freedom and join herself to him, become one, yet retain so much of her identity. He had allowed her space. There were days she wanted to be alone, or days that she missed Voyager, her crew, the thought of home, and he'd know she desired solitude.

 

This morning she had woken up in his arms. "I know now why you made arrangements to have Tara looked after," she had breathed warmly into his neck.

 

"And good morning to you too, Kathryn Janeway," Chakotay had said and her heart flipped again when the dimples formed in his cheeks when he smiled.

 

She crawled quickly on top of him, rubbed her hips against his crotch and showed no surprise at how quickly he had become aroused. More than an hour later, they rose in delicious lethargic aftermath of sex in the morning and prepared to come on duty.

 

Now Chakotay was pensive again and she wondered what was going on in his mind. She clasped his fingers.

 

"Are you okay, Chakotay?" she asked, the concern immediately in her voice.

 

He frowned when he looked at her, his face drawn. Kathryn frowned, and hit her commbadge while still keeping her eyes on him.

 

"Janeway to sickbay."

 

"What can I do for you, Captain?" the Doctor asked.

 

"Commander Chakotay is on his way to you, Doctor. I suspect he's suffering from a severe headache. Janeway out."

 

"It seems I have no choice," Chakotay said as he tried to smile, but for the first time he rubbed his fingers against his temples, closing his eyes as he did so.

 

"You've been having these headaches since the accident, Chakotay. I wasn't going to intervene, thinking you'd actually go see the EMH yourself. I am concerned, Commander, when one of my crew behaves in such an irresponsible manner - "

 

"Thank you very much, Captain Janeway. I'll see the Doctor." 

 

Kathryn sat back in her chair, smiled at Chakotay's belligerence. He had never liked seeing the doctor.

 

"I hope the Commander is alright, Captain," Tom Paris said at the conn, not turning round to face the Captain when he spoke.

 

"He will be after Doctor's seen him."

 

"Jeez, I'd like to be a fly on the wall there..."

 

Half an hour later, her commbadge beeped.

 

"Sickbay to Janeway."

 

"Go ahead, Doctor."

 

"Captain, Commander Chakotay is fine. I've told him to go to the nursery and play with the babies for an hour or so. Could you come to the ready room? There's something I must discuss with you."

 

Kathryn was immediately on her guard, but she nodded reassuringly to Harry and Tom and Tuvok when they looked pointedly at her.

 

"He's probably tried to beat up the doctor," she said, her smile not reaching her eyes. "Tuvok, you have the bridge..."

 

In her ready room she switched on her computer.

 

"Captain, Commander Chakotay had a small, but benign tumor that was responsible for his headaches. I've cleared it, I'm happy to say."

 

Kathryn closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

 

"There's more, Captain."

 

"Doctor?"

 

"Commander Chakotay may not regain his memory, as I've indicated before."

 

"I'm filling in the blanks for him, Doctor. It may not be ideal, but it's helping a great deal."

 

"I have no doubt that some of those are traumatic, Captain," the Doctor ventured.

 

"Yes - yes, you're right. But it has to be done. Commander Chakotay is already aware that he may never regain his memory, so he relies on what details I can fill in - the personal ones. The rest he studies thhrough the ship's logs and database."

 

"Ah, yes, that's what I was coming to, Captain. I believe the Commander has repressed some of his memories. They are ones he may not have wanted to remember before the accident. But Captain, there will be occasions when there will be minor triggers that will necessitate you coming in the open with it."

 

"What are you saying Doctor?"

 

"Tara, Captain. Your infant. She was born a month prematurely."

 

Kathryn turned cold at the doctor's words. She drew in her breath sharply, and before she could prevent it, her hand had gone to cover her mouth. When she collected herself, she said:

 

"Commander Chakotay knows Tara was born prematurely, Doctor."

 

"Captain," came the Doctor's terse rejoinder, "most babies born a month prematurely are born healthy, they weigh the average weight for babies, they don't go into incubators, they don't have problems breathing."

 

"Tara was fine, Doctor."

 

"Captain, how much have you told your husband?"

 

"He understands that Tara was - was healthy at birth," she answered stonily. Her voice had become suddenly stern;  she was giving the doctor the brush off.

 

"Commander Chakotay is going to ask, Captain. Depend upon it."

 

"What do you want me to say, Doctor? That she suffered fetal distress?"

 

"No, but have you told him, Captain, that you suffered complications during your pregnancy? Are you going to tell him that you kept quiet about it throughout your pregnancy?"

 

With that the doctor abruptly closed communication and Kathryn Janeway stared for a few seconds in stunned silence at the Federation insignia on the screen.

 

****

 

END CHAPTER TWELVE

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

 

EMAIL

 

J/C FANFIC

 

 

 

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