Surprised by Joy
companion piece to "Baby Mine"
vanhunks
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek Voyager, Janeway and Chakotay.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A companion piece to "Baby Mine"
SUMMARY: Kathryn watches as her baby lies sleeping.
SURPRISED BY JOY
I watch you as you lie sleeping and wonder once again at the miracle that is you. Your hair is so soft and silky, black as only a raven's darkest sheen could kiss your forehead in gentle wisps, lifted by your own breathing.
Are you breathing? Are you? A quickening of my heartbeat at the brief surge of disquiet, I lean closer to you, watch for the rise and fall of your chest. My breath is pained for those moments as I establish that you are alive. Then for a few moments I feel the new sagging, wondrous elation, a relief that swamps me from the burn in my eyes to the very depths of my soul.
How many times have I counted the fingers on your dainty hands? Those hands on which I see the pulsing capillaries straining against the tiny hairs on your skin that make them quiver as if a spectre had moved over you? How many times have I counted your tiny toes and marvelled at their shape, making certain you have five on each foot?
Your cheeks are flawless, as only a baby's cheeks could command such perfection of soft smoothness. I watch your eyelids twitch and wonder what you are dreaming, whether you are dreaming at all. Do you sense me? Do you sense him who is your daddy?
Daddy…
How foolish I had been, how fraught my own soul with fear of so many things! It took me seven years to realise how my life would be nothing if he were not there to share it. Seven long years. Even now, as I think back on that fateful period when I had rejected him time after time, I feel the shame, the regret that I made him wait so long.
And when we became one in marriage, began another journey, of waiting for you. It was not easy, my little one, my perfect angel. So many storms, so many ups and downs, and then the fear that we'd lose you.
We almost did lose you. I feel how the pain drives a skewer through me, that burns my body just thinking about it. Doctor said it wasn't going to be easy. How right he was! How afraid I had been! How can I explain then, that though he could transport you from my womb en ensure your safety, I still needed to feel you release from me? That I'd hold you on my bosom, still tied to me, still bloodied and wet but oh, so blissfully alive? How can I explain that? I wanted to feel what mothers before me felt. I wanted your daddy's hand in mine when contractions became unbearable! And do you know, sweetheart, how an Angry Warrior could cry?
My life is complete. I could not have been happier. Not all the adventures in a quadrant far away, not any first contact with strange and exotic beings, not any supernovas, not any fear, not any guilt expressed, nothing, nothing that I had ever experienced, could prepare me for the exhilaration of seeing you for the first time.
And so I am humbled, so deeply awed by the beauty of you, your utter fragility and total, total dependence on me, your mother. You came to me late in my life, as the seal, the wonderment on my union with your father.
To hold, to raise, to kiss you when you hurt, to kiss you when you are happy, to catch you when you fall and ultimately, the courage to let you fly from me one day.
How could I not but name you Joy?
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