The
heart is a lonely hunter
vanhunks
Disclaimer:
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The crew sees how Kathryn has become increasingly lonely despite her dependence on Michael, her holographic lover. Tom, who devised the programme of Fair Haven, faces a difficult decision.
NOTE: Although this is mainly Kathryn and Michael, it focuses on P/T, as well as some allusion to the imminent possibility of J/C.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
The corridors of the ship were darkened, with illumination at a level that denoted to its solitary dwellers that it was night. It was the hour of the wolf as some people in ancient folklore would have it. When the dark of Earth's night would be insinuated upon by the golden light that emanated from a full moon. There would then be quiet, a stillness broken by the distant cry of a lone wolf, or the sudden fluttering of the night owl that heralded portents of death.
Here on the ship those with memories of quiet moonlit nights, of mystical happenings when dark descended and edged out the dying light, of midnight trysts and feasts, could easily imagine such scenarios as they passed through each passage.
They walked in the comfort that old tales and superstitions no longer ruled with fear in the hearts of people. But for them the idea of such possibilities was enough to create just that aura and the appearance of dark and deep mystery as to evoke a sense of ghostliness.
Even on a starships, they could believe they were seeing things. Even on starships they could accept certain things happening which some time ago had been unusual and which now became a part of their daily - or nightly - existence.
In the still of the night, and if a crewmember stood still long enough, they could feel the vibration of the thrumming engines of the ship as it moved at warp. That was the only sound that could be heard, unless some member heard those little cries that he could relate to his friends later, emanated from a certain crewman’s cabin, or officer’s quarters.
"It’s alright, Crewman Alonso," the First Officer would say, "I’ll transfer you to another deck where you won’t have to listen to them."
At the hour of the wolf an officer transformed, and the red or gold or teal uniforms would be replaced by greatcoats and knee high boots, or long billowy dresses with high buttoned necks and porcelain miniature brooches.
Sightings of these visions were no longer viewed with surprise, or, as in the beginning, with mild shock.
It was why no one who still walked the corridors during Gamma shift stopped to wonder why a woman in a long dress walked with measured steps to make her way to the holodecks. They offered only cursory glances and courteous nods to the woman who in turn gave a curt smile as she passed them. The first time they saw her in that dress there was still an air of playfulness, light teasing, a kindly empathy they felt had they been her, or in her shoes.
Now, their hearts ached for her.
"Please, do not be sad, Dina," Ensign Vorik would tell his partner as they passed the lonely woman, "we cannot help her. There is nothing we can do..."
*
Tom Paris was in his uniform, having just put it on after B’Elanna nudged him awake, and none too gently. Her heels dug painfully into his back as she kicked him. Incapable of being angry with her, he sat down next to her on the bed. She was worried and so was he. For that matter, so was everyone on the ship. She lay on her back, her eyes filled with a look that dared him to get back in bed with her. There was to be no joining her until he completed his mission. Her message was clear: go out, come back and tell me you've succeeded.
"Tom," B’Elanna implored the helmsman of Voyager, "why don’t you delete the programme?"
"I wish I could, B’Elanna. But I can’t take him away from her..."
"She’s dying slowly, Tom," B’Elanna’s eyes burned into his, "you know that. Every time she returns from Fair Haven, she’s even lonelier. It’s not helping her anymore."
Tom sighed. So what else was new? It wasn't something he had a remote wish to deny. The Captain's continued visits to Fair Haven long after the crew had stopped going there, was viewed by all of them with an air of sympathy. They too, could see her visits to Fair Haven wasn't helping her. It hadn't been helping her for a long time...
"It's not helping her, Tom," B'Elanna repeated her statement.
"Do you think I don’t know that?"
Tom rose from the bed, and wished for a moment he could crawl back under the warm covers and just hold B'Elanna close into forever. "I can’t modify Michael," he said, "and she can’t either..."
"It wouldn’t help her cause if you did," B’Elanna replied a little fiercely as she raised herself on her elbow. The strap of her nightie slinked from her shoulder and he groaned when her breasts were visible to him.
"What else can I do?" he asked, throwing his hands up in despair.
"Chakotay - "
"Chakotay, nothing, B’Elanna. She sees him as nothing more than her friend. You know there are unwritten rules about onboard affairs, and your indiscretions are under greater scrutiny if you’re Captain Janeway. She was always too much aware of her own goals, rules and dictates to make herself vulnerable in that way."
B'Elanna jack-knifed to a sitting position and glared at Tom.
"Indiscretions? Tom!" B'Elanna cried in outrage, "you want to call falling in love, and having a meaningful relationship with another officer an indiscretion?"
Tom sighed. He phrased it badly.
"You know what I mean..."
"Yeah. You always thought very highly of Captain Janeway, Tom. More than most of us. You would see any liaison she might have as something distasteful - "
"B'Elanna, you're twisting my intention. Fine, I admire the Captain. A heck of a lot. There's not much I wouldn't do for her. So yes, I tend to get protective."
"Exactly! So you keep Michael alive for her..."
"Dammit, B'Elanna," he swore softly.
"Someone who wouldn't make emotional demands on her, that she could switch on and off at her own behest..."
"B'Elanna!"
"It's true! Who would be able to Captain a starship and divide her time equally between duty and love?"
Tom gave a sigh of resignation. B'Elanna was right. It had taken him long to admit to that fact, and to acknowledge that his Captain allowed duty and command and protocol to dictate her heart. Protocols! She hadn't given her great affection for her first officer a chance. It could have been something wonderful to witness, something every member of this crew was willing to give their blessing on, something that they would have cossetted and protected. He knew that, and B'Elanna knew that. Hell, all of them knew that. Kathryn Janeway let duty triumph over love, and so created for herself a fantasy - albeit one he himself spawned - which could replace real life demands and fill the aching void that turned her into one of the loneliest persons he had ever known.
"You know," Tom started carefully, "that she has a certain image to uphold, B'Elanna. She must always have felt it wouldn't do to have an affair, however meaningful - "
"Yeah!" B’Elanna said a little caustically, "a ‘how would it look if Captain Janeway was caught kissing an officer in deck ten’s turbolift?’"
"Not any officer, B’Elanna..."
"Yeah, right."
"It’s really not funny, B’Elanna. By denying a vital facet of her being, the essence of her humanity, she has become cheerless and lonely."
"It didn’t have to be, Tom. Who the hell cares? How long has this carried on? It's insane! We’re so far from home still! It's not as if she’s going to jump in the sack with just anyone! The potential was always there for her to validate something more than just common friendship with an officer, even if it were Chakotay..."
"Especially if it were him, B’Elanna."
B’Elanna sighed. Michael blew up in everyone’s face. Even he, it seemed, could not fill that gap anymore in Kathryn Janeway’s heart. How could he? He was nothing more than a light refraction, a photonic entity with no sentience. By itself, his programme could not adapt and grow, it could not develop beyond the parameters entered into those subroutines. While it had to be fun in the beginning to have a hologram express his affection and love for a living and breathing being, the mind and the heart gradually required more. Now there was still an emptiness, a thirst to deepen what was already there.
B'Elanna knew through her own relationship with Tom, that that emotion, that love could change in a wonderful way its colours as the relationship progressed. Love, she knew in her heart, also grew. It had to be tended constantly, enriched and fed in a wholly marvelous way as to render beautiful tones and textures that made the relationship as full of storms as it was full of harmony. In short, there had to be surprises all the time. Tom did that for her. He surprised her in a hundred different ways, and always, always the richness was there that she could touch.
What the Captain had with Michael, lacked all of those things, and that was why, B'Elanna believed, the Captain came away time after time after time unfulfilled, with that void growing bigger and bigger.
If the Captain had been Klingon, her very nature would have led her to hunt for a mate. A real mate. <We hunt in our way, mark our mates for life, and we never look back. It is something so basic, so primal, even humans have it and give in to the urge. Even the Captain...>
"The heart is a lonely hunter..."
"What...?" Tom asked distractedly.
"Just that, Tom. Now, are you going to go to the Captain’s quarters and confront her once more?" B’Elanna asked sleepily.
Tom bent down and kissed her, his hand inevitably roaming over her body. She felt soft and warm. He stood up again.
"The things I would do for love..." he said softly as he left his quarters.
*
Tonight was to be no different from other nights as Kathryn Janeway prepared to leave her quarters. Lately her insomnia had driven her most nights out of her cabin, and then she roamed the decks. Sometimes Chakotay would accompany her, and when she returned, he would give her a courteous nod before he left for his own cabin. She managed a few hours of sleep then, after lying awake for a long time in her bed and thinking. She gave a sigh. It was silly even now, to turn to her side expecting to see him there, or just wishing she could feel his body close to hers. They were the nights that her loneliness drove her out of bed, and she would go to him to talk, or to be held in his arms. She longed to feel his arms around her, longed for his kisses he would drop on her forehead, her cheeks, her lips... Just wanting to be needed for herself.
At 2350 she was dressed in the long dress she had worn that first day to Fair Haven. She stood at her dresser and made last minute adjustments to her dress, touched her cheek, and patted down her hair at her sides. Her hand touched the brooch she pinned to the high neck of the bodice. Kathryn looked in her mirror.
*
What shall I tell you today, Michael? I look at my reflection and I can see you smile at me. I know how you want me to tell you what happened to me, how my day had been, or what new and exciting adventures your Katie O'Claire had.
Today I shall tell you that I felt the isolation strongly again. I am this crew. I am a part of them, yet apart from them. Why did today's events enforce so blindingly my own 'outcast state'? Was it because we witnessed the beautiful joining of a young man and woman on the planet we visited? Was it because I saw my first officer look at me with pain in his eyes? Was it because I saw my pilot and his love hold hands while the wedding ritual continued? The bride had looked to her chosen, and her whole face was lit with happiness. Joy radiated from the core of her heart. Did you know I could see it? See how she glowed with inner peace as her husband looked at her, and touched her forehead with his fingers?
Have you ever experienced Joy, Michael? Have you ever felt that you lived inside of it, and became Joy itself?
I guess you haven't. You were programmed to feel those things and for you, everything is fleeting. Love, joy, freedom... Most of what you are, I made you. You cannot be more than what you are, nor less.
How fleeting! I watched the bride and groom and the old, old longing took its hands and gripped them tightly around my heart. What I want is not what I dared have. You understand that, don't you? What I want, I could forego in this realm where I live and breathe because others depended on how I lived and breathed. Because you understand, don't you, Michael, that I could never seek to assuage the crying need of the flesh. I clamour emotional completion, and the burning yearning to be needed for more than I am, and more than I can give. What could I do when my heart and my flesh cried out in a realm where there was no completion?
I came to you.
You understand that, don't you? You always have, telling me that with you I could be complete, with you I could share my deepest longing and innermost needs. With you I could be free, open myself and be vulnerable, expose my heart to you. With you I could be just...Katie...
Am I therefore not just a woman with needs? Am I not human? Oh, Michael, I know that when I lie with you tonight in the tall grass, you will tell me I am all woman, you will tell me I am just human. You will kiss me and your touch on my lips will comfort more than it will signify a certain passion I know that lurks in you... and in me. Then I will cry in your arms as I sometimes do, for here, where I am, all passion is subdued, all emotion suppressed where no one can see into my heart. Here I must be what I am: a leader, a parent, a loving sister, a mentor to everyone who needs to have a particular fear allayed, or apprehension stilled. Here I cannot indulge in me. I cannot allow my own needs to be fulfilled before those who look towards my leadership, before those who hope with desperate fervour that I bring them to our own familiar safe haven.
Today, watching the daughter of the Ambassador pledge her lasting vows to the man she loved, I was once again filled with doubt. I wondered as I always did: could I have made a different decision? Could I have taken a partner here, and allowed myself to lead by a new example? Could I find release in the arms of an officer, my first officer? Could I? I wondered again: Would I withdraw again in the fear that such a step would be unbecoming my status here?
I know what you will tell me. You will say:
"Katie, you are too set in your ways now to change. You have traveled too far on the road you've chosen. Your heart is closed to that. I can see what it is doing to you, Katie. You are different every time you come to see me... You leave my abode and your heart is still heavy."
I sigh.
I wonder if I can stand to hear that from you today, Michael. Isn't it an irony of my existence here? I am everything, and I am nothing. All my hopes, all my desires, all that I want to express sunk under another purpose, another name, familiar, not wholly alien, but recognisable: at all times I must be a captain.
I give a final tug at my dress and satisfied that I am looking my best, I make for the door. It swishes open and I step into the darkened corridor.
*****
Tom did not go to the Captain's quarters as he promised B'Elanna. He lounged outside the holodeck, and knowing that the Captain had booked the holodeck at her new favourite hour, he knew she’d be here in the next few minutes.
He was not surprised when he saw her walk slowly down the corridor in his direction.
<How can I tell her?> he wondered as his heart bled for a few seconds furiously at the sight of her. Her dress looked suddenly longer, and the hem dragged along the floor. He realised with a pang that she had lost weight. That was why her dress hung on her. She wore mostly the same dress every time she came to visit Michael.
<I must tell her...>
"Captain, it's good to see you," he lied, aching to take her in his arms and haul her away from the holodeck.
She paused as she stood at the panel that would allow her entry to Fair Haven. Her eyes were on him.
<How tired her eyes are. How sallow her skin looks... Her hands trembled... Oh, dear Father in heaven, give me the strength to pull her away... Why does she punish herself so? Why?>
"Thank you, Tom," Kathryn said, and he thought her voice sounded so sad, so pained.
"Michael is probably waiting for you..."
"I know..." There was a ghost of a smile on her face. Tom wanted to die.
<Tell her...tell her...>
"Captain..."
"Yes, Tom?"
"Michael..."
"What about Michael?" she asked as she entered her codes, then looked up at him.
Tom sighed.
"Leave him be, Captain, please. For your own sake."
"I - " She paused, her tired eyes misting, and her lower lip trembling.
"I know, Captain," Tom whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion, "I know. You need him..."
"Then you know."
"I'm sorry..."
Tom watched the holodeck doors slide open, and stared long after it swallowed the Captain into her simulated love affair.
<I'll not leave here until you come out, Captain>, Tom swore as he stood against the opposite bulkhead and prepared his vigil.
*****
END PART 1
**
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
PART TWO
By the time Kathryn reached the stone wall that marked the border of Hogg’s Farm just outside Fair Haven, she was tired. Still, the quiet air and undulating green hills provided a balm as she perched on the low wall and looked around her. Her breathing was laboured, and only minutes later she felt the cool breeze caress her, easing her heaving chest as she started to relax.
She stared over the hills and in the distance she could see the church steeple. Michael once told her how students used to run from steeple to steeple, criss-crossing lanes, hills, this wall...
"I never could make it beyond the bracken fell where Craigie church stands, Katie," he told her. She had laughed at the time, telling him he should exercise more. But she had known, and later, he too, once he was apprised of the truth.
<I should stop walking up this hill>, she was thinking as she waited for Michael. She seemed to be more apt to drain her energy quickly, especially here on the holodeck. Perhaps she should pay the EMH her long delayed visit. Kathryn shuddered a little. She was in no mood for the doctor's remonstrations.
"You are just as bad as that first officer of yours, Captain," he complained.
"I don't suppose you are going to enlighten me, Doctor," she answered him on one occasion. But she had known. That had been the time Chakotay had broken a bone in his hand and refused treatment.
How could she tell him that there was a dent in the bulkhead between their quarters? A dent Chakotay put there as he rammed his fist against it?
She sighed. No use entertaining those morbid thoughts.
Michael would be with her shortly, and her tiredness soon made way for her excitement at the prospect of seeing him again.
Kathryn wondered though at the last time she came to visit him. He had stared intently at her, stroked her hair and kissed her cheek. His kiss had been perfunctory, as if he were performing a duty. She remembered feeling a little let down. She noticed that he had a frown, a preoccupied look about him. If she didn't know better, she could have sworn that he was sentient.
Still, today she would tell him of the wedding. He always wanted to know little details of her life.
She sighed. She missed his closeness, she missed their lovemaking. He hadn’t been intimate with for a long time, just content to hold her close to him for long, long periods. She had never thought to question it, accepting with surprising ease that she could just stay in his arms. She liked that too, yet there was a strange detachment. It was as if Michael were having second thoughts. Was Michael changing? If so, how could he? And why...?
<Am I changing? What’s happening to me?> she thought.
<Fool, you know what's happening...>.
"Katie..."
Kathryn swung around to see Michael. He must have come from the direction of the town. She stood up and closed the distance between them.
"Michael!"
He took her in his embrace, a very light embrace that made her look up at him.
"Michael...? Is anything wrong?"
He held her away from him, and he looked at her, as if he were assizing her. Now it was Kathryn who frowned.
"Michael?" she asked again.
"You...appear to have lost more weight, Katie," he said calmly.
"I must be working too hard, then," she replied, "the stresses of the daily grind." Her attempt at humour washed over him as he touched her cheek tenderly.
"We must talk..."
Kathryn froze. She felt the sudden onset of nervousness, a waft of fear surging through her. She tried to quell the dread. Her face paled even more.
"What is the matter, Michael? Are you unhappy about something? Tell me, please." Her eyes darkened and her heart raced. What was Michael’s problem today?
Michael took her hand and led her back to the wall. He held her so that she could sit, while he remained standing, staring in the distance at the same steeple she had been staring at earlier. Her hand groped desperately for his as she sought a physical connection.
"Katie... Katie..." he started as he cupped her hand in both of his and held it to his chest.
"I was going to write you a letter."
"A - A letter?"
Michael’s eyes closed briefly, then he held her gaze again.
"I - I thought I’d be a coward if I did, not being able to face you. So I wanted to see you myself, and tell you what I have to tell you - "
"I - Michael, I’ll come more often, if that’s what you want..." she said softly.
"What I want, sweet, gentle, strong and loving Katie O’Claire, I wished to heaven you could give me."
"I - I don’t know what you mean."
She knew.
"Let me go, Katie," Michael asked as his hands squeezed her hand to his chest, "please..."
There was such a begging tone in his voice, his eyes filled with so much entreaty that she involuntarily did what she did most times she was here with him: she forgot he was not sentient.
Her heart swelled, filled with a great, great understanding and an equally fierce pain of what she had been doing for so long. She clung to an image...an idea... she had been...a woman obsessed.
Still.
"Michael, I need you in my life - "
"Katie, I can’t be a part of your life, and I want to so badly."
Kathryn felt dizzy, as if the clouds in the blue sky suddenly turned into a vortex, spinning and spinning. She could feel her heart pounding, and she dared not look around her. It seemed even the usual sounds of the birds stilled as she looked at her lover.
"Michael..."
"Let me go, Katie, so that I can be at peace, and you can have peace. I can see you are unhappy... unhappy... Your eyes... They tell me a story, you know. They tell me of wasted depths, of a great void that there is still inside you, even though you lie in my arms and even though I make love to you. Once, I thought it was enough. Once, you thought it was enough - "
"Please... don’t go on, Michael. It is painful for - for me..."
"I have to, don’t you see? You explained to me that I am a hologram, a photonic being, and I understood it at the time."
"I can’t... that part of me is tied to you - "
"More than that I can never be, Katie. My thought processes and my intellect, my ‘ability’ to have feelings and love are all static. I’m not growing, Katie, and you are. All the time. The chasm is getting wider and wider, and the new void in you bigger..."
"I can make you - "
"It will not help, Katie," Michael said quietly.
"There is no one where I come from who can fulfil that need, Michael. There is no one I can share my feelings with, my fears, my vulnerabilities. I - "
"Look at me, Katie," Michael implored as Kathryn turned her face away from him. When she looked at him, her eyes were already filling with tears.
"I don’t know if I can bear to listen, Michael..."
"You have to, Katie. I want you to let me go. I want you to make that decision. I am begging you. It is to me painful to see you every time, and to know that I can no longer satisfy your needs."
"I am happy now."
"With tears in your eyes?" Michael smiled, his eyes suddenly looking bleak. Kathryn wondered for a second if his programme was adapting, then shook her head. She couldn’t touch his subroutines, so what was wrong?
"I don’t want to lose you..." Her hand went up and splayed across his chest. It was such a familiar gesture, she blinked for a second, a flash of an image passing before her. Only, the chest was harder...
"You will have to, for your own sanity, Katie."
Michael touched her hair, smoothing it tenderly. She remembered all the times he loosened it before he made love to her... Now his hands trembled as he removed the pins and watched her hair fan loosely into her neck. He cupped her cheek with infinite gentleness, his thumb brushing over her closed eyes.
"Look at me, Katie," he whispered.
When she opened her eyes, he asked her: "What do you see?"
Kathryn opened her mouth, closed it again. Saying it out loud was to be a confirmation of the truth. She had not wanted to confront it, didn’t want to now. But Michael...
"Your handsome face, your dark hair, your eyes..."
"Yes..."
Her lips trembled.
"Your strength, your strong body, your virility..."
"Don’t cry, Katie..."
"I can’t help it."
"You have to face it, or you will never be at peace."
"I know..."
"Katie," Michael said tenderly as he touched her hair again, "you have outgrown me. While I remained the strong, virile, handsome young man you know, you have changed."
Kathryn closed her eyes again, and the tears seeped through her closed lids, burning her skin as they coursed unrestrained down into her neck. She heard Michael speak, every word, every pause and nuance attesting to what she already knew, to what she had not wanted to acknowledge and confront. His hand went again to her hair. The crease in her forehead deepened, her face became more stricken. She gave a little sob.
<Oh dear God, Michael...>
Very gently he let his fingers run through her strands.
"Your hair is grey, Katie..."
She nodded.
"You skin is no longer so supple and firm as it had been fifteen years ago."
She shook her head again.
"You don’t walk as briskly as you did, and I know you must have been exhausted walking up here to Hogg’s Farm..."
"Yes..." she whispered, her eyes still closed.
"Look at me..."
She opened her eyes.
"If it were just this difference, your grey hair and slower pace, your age... it would have mattered less..."
She saw his eyes sadden as he studied her features again.
"But, sweet Katie, you know I cannot move beyond those doors you come through every time. You know that I have never walked beyond the tall church steeple in Craigie there in the distance."
"Michael - "
"Please, let me finish. It’s not your grey hair, Katie. It’s too much
more than that. I wish I could make love with you, and wake up in the morning
with you next to me. I want to be with you so much, grow old with you, see your
gentle smile and know that tomorrow morning you’ll still be there. I wish we
could wake up to sunrises together, sit on a swing seat on the porch of your
home in
"I know that your need is the same and that is why, even though you never speak of it, I know you are so sad when you leave me every time. Love, my sweet Katie, needs to grow. The point where mine is for you, it cannot move beyond, and your needs changed. You need more, Katie. It’s in your eyes. You need to wake up in the morning, and find your lover still in bed with you. You need that challenge that only a union with a living, breathing sentient partner can give and be, you even need the demands that such a union will bring. You can’t have that with me, and we can’t have our grey hairs together.
"That is why I want you to let me go, Katie. I see that you can have that life you dream of - yes, do not deny it - with someone from your own world. I know there is someone who could be all of those things for you, Katie."
Michael smiled as he said it, his hand coming up to cup her cheek gently.
"You have spoken enough of him on your last visits... "
He smiled as he saw her look of surprise. Chakotay's name had been so often on her lips in the last months, that Michael had wondered if Kathryn realised at all how she was growing away from him, her holographic lover. He could see how she was finally beginning to let go of the old and what she had regarded for so long as impossible, dictates of duty and command. He had known that it wouldn't be long, he had known that the time would come that he had to help make her realise that she was finally more than ready to take that step and allow Chakotay to be the real, flesh and blood man in her life. That time was now.
"I ask that you take that step."
"Michael..." Kathryn threw herself against him, and his arms clasped her tightly to him. She shivered a little and when she stood away from him, there was an infinite sadness in her eyes.
There was also acceptance.
"Will you, Kathryn Janeway, of the starship Voyager?"
Kathryn Janeway lifted her hand and touched his face. It was her voice more than he could see it in her face, that was filled with sorrow. A last time Michael turned his face into her palm, closing his eyes as he sought to remember this final touch.
"What will you do?"
"I don’t know. It depends... who knows...?"
Kathryn didn’t touch him again. Instead, she stood a little away from him, her hands at her sides. The clouds that had been there for so long, slowly moved away. Though the withdrawal was painful, the new clouds offered her a vista that suddenly, miraculously, appeared as an exciting possibility. He was happy at last, at peace now that he could see that she was embracing that peace.
Michael raised his hand in a final wave. He didn’t speak, just kept his eyes on her all the time.
And Kathryn never took her eyes off him as she spoke:
"Computer, end programme."
*****
Tom straightened up when the holodeck doors opened and Kathryn Janeway stood just outside it.
"Captain..." he said softly.
She walked slowly towards him.
<She has been shattered. It’s in her eyes. Her lips are trembling. What have I done?> Tom thought as she neared him. It was only when she stood in front of him, that he could see her eyes, filled with the pain of severance from Michael, yet - and Tom's heart thundered furiously - there was also a new sheen in her eyes. It was a peaces that replaced the old emptiness, the old loneliness. He knew that Voyager's first officer would finally have his day of happiness.
"Tom..."
"Captain...?"
He saw her control, her saw that same control breaking. He caught her in time as she gave a few heaving shudders. His arms enfolded her and he marveled how even through this great dress, he could still feel how thin she had become. His hand cupped her head, and he found the urge to press his lips against her grey hair. It was a touch so full of comfort that he could hear her sigh. His own eyes filled with tears.
It had been a final, desperate attempt to let her break her dependency on Michael. He could feel the way she stood against him, the tone of her crying, that it was a relief as well as a release.
<Perhaps...it worked after all>, he thought as she at last stood away from him. The sadness that had been there so long, that had pained so many of them on the ship over the years, was there, but how uplifting when he saw the hope that accompanied that look.
"Tom..."
"Yes, Captain?"
"You did right..."
"Aye, Captain."
"And Tom..."
"Yes?"
He felt suddenly and ridiculously light, as if he could float. Her eyes were beginning to shine again.
"You can delete Fair Haven."
"Are you certain, Captain?"
"Are you suddenly dense, Tom Paris? I have given you an order, you know," she said as a smile formed and transformed her face.
His heart did a double flip. She looked beautiful...beautiful...
"Have I told you lately that you are beautiful with your grey hair, Captain?"
"About a hundred times," she said as they walked down the corridor, her arm linked through his.
"Well, Captain, I’ll not be the only one who’ll continue saying so."
When they reached the turbolift, she paused first before they entered. She gave his hand a squeeze. When they stood inside the lift, she asked:
"Have I told you that you have a knack for making me feel good?"
"Captain," Tom said, his familiar grin showing, "I should be the ship's morale officer!"
He was definitely pleased when she smiled at that.
"Next time Chakotay and I go over crew evaluations..."
"But, seriously, Captain, I'd say you're sure to catch someone's eye..."
"Thank you, Tom. Now tell me, how are the twins?"
"Sleeping with Naomi tonight. But they want to see their godmother tomorrow."
She gave his arm another squeeze.
"Tomorrow it is, Tom."
Tom's smile grew wider as he looked down at her. Things were finally coming together. The Captain seemed to have lost a few years. The vital step she took had taken a load off her. She looked suddenly free, and her eyes had a new sheen to them...
He gave a contented sigh. They were quiet as they exited the lift on her floor.
"Captain," he said as they walked towards her quarters, "have I ever told you that you have a really great first officer?"
"About a hundred times."
"You could compare notes," Tom said glibly as he stood with her at her door.
"Realy? About what?"
"Your grey hair?"
"Get out of here, Tom Paris."
Tom stood stunned as he looked at her. He opened and closed his mouth.
"What?" she asked, nonplussed.
"That is the first time in years I’ve heard you laugh, Captain," he said quietly. He saluted her and then left quickly. He had things to tell B'Elanna... Perhaps they should prepare for a wedding soon...
Kathryn stared a long time after him before she turned to her panel and entered her codes.
She started removing her dress, but halfway down the row of tiny buttons, she looked at the bulkhead that separated her quarters from her first officer's. She saw the small dent.
<And, I’d like to wake up in the morning with him while we compared notes...>
She shook her head as she started removing the dress.
It was an idea that became imminently desirable.
END