Author's Note:This is a sad story. I hope that it doesn't put anyone off Nat King Cole, who had one of the most beautiful voices that ever graced humankind. (Poor Nat, first Unforgettable, now this…)

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Disclaimer:Paramount owns Star Trek Lock, stock and phaser--and no had better forget it..... Music and lyrics are by J. Livingston and R. Evans. Song recorded by Nat King Cole.

La Joconde

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa
Men have named you
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only cause you're lonely
They have blamed you
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?

Chakotay stood in front of the holosuite doors, hesitating, gathering his courage. He fingered the slender program rod and, taking a deep breath, slid it into the access slot. The doors opened and he stepped into the hazy, golden late afternoon sun of Florence. He stood frozen for a minute, uncomfortable and wondering what obscure impulse had led him here tonight. This program was Kathryn's, had always been, even if she had always left it in the public holodeck directory aboard Voyager. He nearly turned on heel and left, but the raucous and slightly drunken party in the holosuite two doors down held no attraction for him either. He was too old for that kind of nonsense and in a more reflective mood than the party allowed. So he lingered in the warm daylight of DaVinci's studio, walking idly among the worktables and furniture, the half-finished models and easels. He wondered where the Maestro was. As if conjured by the thought, the hologram bustled in, waving a roll of paper in his hand

"Katerina?" DaVinci called out. The Maestro was brought up short by the sight of a man in his studio. "Signore, forgive me, I heard a noise and assumed that my apprentice had returned. A faulty assumption, it seems…How may I be of service to you?"

Chakotay began to demur, but DaVinci pressed forward. "A portrait perhaps. Of yourself? Or your wife? I am engaged with several commissions right now, but perhaps something could be arranged…" The hologram closed in on Chakotay and gestured him toward a chair in front of the fireplace. "Come, sit, have some wine with me. You have the look of a man of the world, perhaps you are more interested in one of my inventions." The Maestro lifted a model from a worktable. "Ah. My flying machine. Have you heard if it? The slander of the townspeople not withstanding, it works. Or nearly so. I believe I am very close to success. I have made a number of improvements of late." The hologram returned the model to its place and unrolled the plans for the glider. He traced his index finger along the new lines on the drawing. "See here. The angle of the wing is steeper and…" The Maestro became aware of Chakotay's silence. "Forgive me, I am boring you. I forget that not everyone is as eager to discuss my follies as Katerina."

Chakotay smiled fondly. "She can get carried away with a technical discussion."

The hologram whirled around to face Chakotay. "You are acquainted with my Katerina?" At Chakotay's nod of admission, the Maestro asked, "How is she then? Well and safe, I hope? Tell her it has been too long since she visited me here."

"I wish I could, Maestro, I wish I could."

At the palpable sadness in the man's voice, the hologram cocked his head and studied Chakotay's face intently. After a moment, he said, "I know you." The DaVinci hologram moved to Kathryn's worktable, drawing Chakotay along in his wake. There he opened a leather folio cover and began shuffling through her drawings. He pushed several landscapes aside, paused at one and shook his head. "Katerina has a mastery of technique, but too often she focuses on only the technical. Baa! There is no heart here, no soul. Her portraits are better." DaVinci leafed through until he found a charcoal sketch. He turned triumphantly toward Chakotay. "This is you, " he announced, handing the sheet to the other man. "She has drawn you from memory--a memory of when you were younger and less…distinguished. That is what confused me for a moment." The hologram studied Chakotay's face, the heavier jawline, the wrinkles at the eyes and mouth, the thick patches of gray at temples and forehead, and continued cagily, "Or perhaps more time has passed since Katerina last visited than I can account for."

>Chakotay looked up, startled by the hologram's remark, wondering if somehow the Doctor's self-awareness had seeped past the holoprogram firewall, when he noticed a half-finished painting just beyond the hologram's broad form. It was a portrait of Kathryn, though Kathryn as he had never seen her. She was dressed in the garb of a Renaissance noblewoman with flowing amber hair and jeweled earbobs. The portrait's face was unfinished. The eyes looked out with serenity and hint of amusement, but the rest of the features were only roughed in.

Chakotay moved to the painting. "Kathryn," he breathed with quiet recognition. Turning toward the hologram, he demanded, "Did you do this?"

"Yes. Katerina. It was an impossible task for her to sit for me. Like requiring quicksilver to hold its form, but she humored me. As you can see it is nearly done."

"Finish it," Chakotay's voice gritted.

" I cannot." There was genuine regret in DaVinci's voice. "The last time she was here, Katerina wore her soldier's face. And now I can see no other."

Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart?
Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there and they die there.
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or just a cold lonely lovely work of art?

Chakotay stumbled backward and collapsed into a chair. His hand rose to cover his eyes and the tears that burned there. He knew exactly when the last time Kathryn had been here. There was no need to check the usage log. He knew. He knew.

Voyager had happened on a decaying artificial wormhole and risked traverse. The gamble had paid off. A shaken but largely undamaged Voyager had been deposited in the Kotaron system within the Federation's boundaries.

They'd been welcome home with speeches and medals. Even the Maquis had been hailed as heroes. But their exuberant welcome had masked something less benign. The Federation was at war.

Voyager had been quickly passed into the eager hands of the Engineering Corps, who ripped the ship apart, greedy for the new technologies she carried. Most of Voyager's officers was hastily briefed on the strategic situation and reassigned to other ships. All except Chakotay. He had been offered a starship command, the Hestia. And Kathryn. She was going to stay at Starfleet Command, as a consultant in Tactical Planning.

Chakotay had asked for some time to consider the offer and received three days. He had left for the Chuska Mountains to seek his answers in the silence and solitude of the broken land. He wasn't sure that he could work for Starfleet. They had abandoned his colony and others like it in the DMZ, leaving them to fend for themselves against the Cardassians in the name of expediency. And he had repudiated them for it. Now that Starfleet was facing Chakotay's old enemy, they were desperate for his help. And he wasn't sure he could accommodate them any more than they had accommodated him ten years earlier.

And then there was Kathryn. While they had been lost in the Delta Quadrant together in the close confines of the small ship, an attraction had arisen. Powerful. Undeniable. But one they could not act on. Now they were home and all the constraints were lifted. He wanted to explore what parameters had always denied. And Kathryn had indicated she was interested in doing so too.

Decision made, Chakotay returned to find two messages awaiting him: one from Admiral DesChamp asking for his answer; and another, from Kathryn, asking him to call her. Her eyes were bright with excitement and faintly amused . He called DesChamp first and declined command of the Hestia; in fact, he tendered his resignation from Starfleet altogether. Then he called Kathryn, but her terminal was busy. And when he called again, she didn't answer.

It was three days later when someone, he couldn't remember who now, one of the Delaneys, maybe, or Harry Kim, told him that Kathryn had warped out of Space Dock days earlier with the Hestia under her command. He had tried to get a message through to her, but he wasn't family, nor a member of Starfleet any longer. His message was accepted by a smiling, impersonal receptionist and he was told it would be transmitted as soon as the Hestia came out of the restricted communications area.

It was a month later before he learned that the Hestia had been part of a taskforce sent to engage the Jem Hadar/Cardassian forces near the ever-shifting border. The Battle for System MR-993 hadn't been spectacular, or even particularly significant. It was just another slugging match, though it was one that Federation forces won. There were causalities, of course, and Kathryn Janeway was one of them. She had survived the battle, but in the course of rescuing several crewmembers from the leaking radioactive mess had been the Hestia's warp core, she sustained "grave injuries." "Grave injuries." That was all the information Chakotay could ever squeeze from Starfleet. He commed old friends, called in every favor that was owed him and then some, and eventually learned that Kathryn Janeway had been transferred from the hospital on Star Base 6 to Starfleet Medical on Earth--and that fact alarmed him. Her condition must be truly serious if her injuries were more than could be handled at the Star Base.

He besieged Starfleet Hospital in San Francisco to no avail. The staff quietly and efficiently rebuffed all his attempts to see Kathryn or even gain some information about her condition. He wasn't family. He asked the staff to take messages to her, requests to let him see her, talk to her. He was never quite sure whether the messages had never been delivered or if she had simply never answered, but either way there was no response. It was maddening. He could accept it, he thought, if she told him simply to go away. He could understand anger or resentment, but not her silence.

Chakotay came to the hospital day after day, pacing in the waiting room at the end of hall, chatting up the nurses in hopes of gleaning some information. Once he even confronted a doctor he had seen leaving Kathryn's room only to be firmly escorted out of the building by a security guard with a warning that if he harassed the staff again he would be turned over to the local authorities.

Still he came and he waited.

He had earned some sympathy among the nursing staff with his persistence and bits of information occasionally came his way. No change. No change. There was never any change. Until one day, the Bolian nurse, an older woman inclined to telling stories about her grandchildren, was waiting for him when visiting hours began. She took Chakotay aside and told him, "She's gone." He had staggered a step backwards, all the breath knocked out of his lungs. The Bolian woman held him tightly by the forearm, squeezing it until he looked back at her. "Not dead," she explained. "Gone. Your friend was discharged this morning." Chakotay nodded in numb gratitude at the news.

"Home?" he managed to ask when he was able to breathe again.

The woman shook her head." I can't tell you. Patient confidentiality. I'm sorry," she said and she meant it.

Chakotay left the hospital and did something he had avoided until now. He called Gretchen Janeway from the first public comm he could find. The woman who answered the call looked older somehow than the reserved, keenly intelligent woman he had met briefly at Voyager's homecoming party. She seemed not to recognize him, even after he had identified himself. Her confusion grew more apparent when he asked about her daughter. A puzzled line had crossed her brow. "Kathryn? Why, Kathryn is at Starfleet," Gretchen Janeway had answered, "She's Captain of Voyager, you know." When he reminded her that Voyager was home and Kathryn had been given command of the Hestia, she grew agitated and strident, then cut the connection.

Chakotay was not surprised to find an angry Phoebe waiting for him when returned to his apartment. Kathryn's younger sister had aged too since he had last seen her and wore bright spots of color on her cheekbones. He knew those blotches well. Kathryn's face looked much the same when she was pushed beyond her limits. Phoebe raged at him for upsetting her mother and forbade him from ever calling her again, but she did throw him a sop in the middle of her excoriation. She told him where Kathryn was. The name she gave was that of a rehabilitation center where only the most hopeless of cases were accepted. Chakotay was genuinely sorry to have alienated Phoebe, but at last he had some answers.

He had left immediately for the center, departing only moments after Phoebe had exited his door. He thought he was prepared for the worst, that he could handle anything, but he wished later that he had been less precipitous. He found Kathryn, yes. And she wasn't dead, though she wasn't really alive either. She hovered somewhere in between, more machine that human. Dying, but not dead. He could stoke her hair, hold her hand, even kiss her silent porcelain lips, but he could not find any remnant of the vibrant woman he had once known.

The facility's doctor had spoken to him about radiation damage and chelation therapies, neuronal regrowth factors and the possibility of recovery, but even as she spoke Chakotay knew she was lying, or, at best, being enormously over-optimistic. Still he came and sat beside his Kathryn, spoke to her of his thoughts and feelings, held her hand still warm with the artificial pulse of blood, and hoped.

Hope doesn't die all at once. It dies day by day, hour by hour, little by little so slowly that it dribbles away without one ever noticing. And so it happened for Chakotay. He still visited Kathryn, but he no longer cherished fantasies of her rising from her biobed and walking with him into the sunset. Gradually he came less and less often until finally not at all. He mourned her and moved on.

Moved on. Chakotay smiled grimly at the thought. He thought he had moved on. He thought he had rebuilt his life. He had a job he enjoyed, found a companionable woman whom he had asked to be his wife, and shared his time with his many friends, yet he had come here, of all places, on the night before his wedding. To Kathryn's studio. He pushed himself heavily out of the chair and went to stand before the portrait. He brushed his fingers over the painted face and wondered how different his life might have been if only his Mona Lisa had smiled for him.

FINIS

For a look at the real Mona Lisa, go here.