See Part One for disclaimer, etc.
Same Time, Next Year - Part Three
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2381 - England
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Kathryn Janeway walked up to the cottage a little unsure of herself. In any other situation she would have laughed at herself for that. Captain Kathryn Janeway unsure of herself - unheard of! But here she was, and unsure was how she was feeling. The reason for it was simple - she still hadn't decided that trying to find Chakotay was a good idea. She didn't even know that he was here. She could knock on the door - there was no modern door chime - just to find some elderly couple had rented the cottage this weekend. But Chakotay had said that he rented the cottage for the same weekend each year, and it was exactly a year ago that she had been here with him. So here she was again. Her thoughts turned briefly to Jackie. If only she knew that her insistence on bringing little Kathryn to visit Mark on the same weekend every year was this year actually helping the woman she held responsible for the breakdown of her marriage! If it hadn't been for Jackie, Kathryn wouldn't have been able to get away from Mark without him suspecting. It was all too perfect. That is, as long as Chakotay was in the cottage.
The time between knocking on the door and it opening in front of her seemed to Kathryn like hours, when in fact it must have been less than five seconds. The wait was worth it. There, standing in front of her and wearing a very tight fitting pair of brown trousers with a loose cream shirt, was Chakotay. To say the look on his face was priceless would have been an understatement. He looked like the proverbial cat who just got the canary.
"Kathryn, you came! I hoped you would, I mean, we both knew I was going to be here again and that you would be able to get away fairly easily this weekend. I just wasn't sure that you'd want to come and see me, but…"
"…here I am. So, are you going to invite me in or do I have to stand here all night?"
"No, come in."
Kathryn walked into the cottage and placed her luggage in the lounge. They both then sat on the couch and looked at each other. The silence stretched on, until Kathryn broke it.
"Well, one of us needs to speak. We established that we're both pleased to be here but that's it. It really is so good to see you again. The number of times I've come so close to contacting you this year has been unbelievable, I almost can't believe I managed not to."
"Same here. I…I still can't believe you're actually here again."
"Will this convince you?"
Kathryn leaned over to give Chakotay a very passionate kiss, during which Chakotay somehow managed to say, "I'm convinced!"
From there, well, it's enough to say that the ice was broken. The evening was spent getting to know each other all over again, mostly in the physical sense. Talking was reserved for later, after all, anything that needed words could wait.
***
It did wait. Until the next day. Kathryn again felt content to wake up in Chakotay's arms. Sometime the previous evening they had made it to the bed, but when that actually happened was anybody's guess. Now she was there and aware of it, she wasn't in any hurry to move. Chakotay didn't stir next to her for another half-hour.
"Morning, sleepy."
"Morning, Kathryn. What time is it?"
"About 1000 hours."
"Really? I can't believe I slept that late. I haven't slept later than 0700 for months."
"Must have worn you out last night then!"
"Probably, but you won't see me complaining."
"I didn't think I would. Do you have anything in for breakfast?"
"Well, I do have some ideas…"
"I meant food!"
"I know that, but do you blame me for trying?"
"We've got plenty of time."
"I seem to remember me telling you that once. It didn't work out quite the way I was expecting though."
"I don't think it worked out the way either of us was expecting, but there's not a whole lot we can do about that now except enjoy the time we have together. So, food."
"Okay, food. What do you fancy?"
"What have you got?"
"Not a lot, actually. How about some fruit?"
"Fruit would be lovely. Where is it? I'll go and sort it out while you wake up properly."
"In the cupboard by the door, at the bottom. You'll find plates in the next cupboard along."
So Kathryn went to fetch breakfast while Chakotay slowly got out of bed, and the day started.
***
A little later, they were both curled up on the couch talking.
"So, how's life with Mark?"
"What made you bring that up?"
"I don't know, I was curious I suppose. So, tell me."
"Same as it's always been, comfortable."
"Comfortable?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, it's just…well, it doesn't bring to mind the classic picture of wedded bliss. But, so long as you're happy…"
"I am."
"That's OK then. So, what were the best and worst things this year?"
"I don't know, let me think. Actually, the best was a direct result of the worst so maybe this is doing things backward, but what the hell. Mark got me a bottle of bubble bath from every major city on Earth.”
“Every city?”
“Yes, every one. You know those little souvenir shops that seem to have survived the test of time despite their reputation for being somewhat tacky?”
“The ones almost unilaterally run by Ferengi?”
“Those are the ones, exactly. Anyway, Mark visited them all and bought a souvenir bubble bath from each one, then brought them back and had them spread around our bathroom so I’d find them when I went in there. Maybe ‘spread around’ is the wrong way to put it, ‘full to bursting’ would be closer to the mark. I have never seen so much bubble bath in one place in my life! It’s going to last me for years, even at the rate I get through it.”
“And that’s saying something!”
“Hey, watch it!”
“Just speaking the truth, anyway, you said it first!”
“Doesn’t mean you had to agree. Anyway, it was so sweet. Like I said before, he was making up for something, but where he got the idea from I have no idea.”
“So what was he making up for?”
“Well, this is the worst thing. When we got married we never got to go on honeymoon. Neither of our schedules would allow it, despite my still supposedly ‘celebrity’ status. Starfleet wouldn’t even put themselves out for their self-proclaimed ‘Delta-Queen’! So, we finally managed to arrange it for this year. All the details were down to Mark. Once we’d agreed on the dates, it was up to him to do everything - he flat out insisted on it. Well, he found this wonderful cabin up in the mountains of Austria. I think the nearest town was called Mallnitz. The cabin really was gorgeous. From the outside it looked just like the log-cabins that have been around for hundreds of years.”
“You mean like I was going to do to our shelter?”
“On New Earth? I suppose so, yes, but without any of the grey panelling! It really was beautiful, fitted in so well with the surrounding countryside. And inside was wonderful as well, fitted with every modern convenience but in a way that didn’t seem out of place considering the rest of the place. It had an atmosphere all of it’s own.”
“Sounds like he got it just right so far, so what happened?”
“Just one minor detail, a case of the modernisation gone too far. Just a slight problem with the bathroom. That is, if you could call it that.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes, no bathtub. Not even a water shower! Just one tiny sonic shower that you couldn’t relax in if you tried! I suppose you can guess what my reaction was. I’ll admit, I may have overreacted a little. It took me by surprise, I mean it was just the sort of place in which you would expect to find a bathtub. I yelled at Mark as soon as I found out. He apologised, but said he didn’t think to check the bathroom facilities when he booked it.”
“Wasn’t there a river or something you could bathe in?”
“Half-way up a mountain in Austria in the middle of winter? Even if I could have found a body of water that wasn’t frozen over I would have caught hypothermia even thinking about submerging myself in it. I probably was too hard on him, but I just couldn’t turn it into the perfect honeymoon in my mind when I was condemned to two weeks without one single soak in the bath. Just a sonic shower! How could he have done that?”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Chakotay, what was the first thing you learnt about me on New Earth?”
“Point taken, he should have thought about your love of baths.”
“And he didn’t. It should have been so perfect, instead we sniped at each other for the whole of the first week.”
“That’s such a shame. Have you forgiven him?”
“You mean did the bubble baths make up for it? It was a sweet gesture, and yes it helped, it just wasn’t what I always imagined my honeymoon would be like. Anyway enough from me, what about you?”
“The best and worst things from my year? Actually, the best isn’t really anything to do with Helen. I got a promotion! Officially, you can no longer give me orders, and neither can Tuvok for that matter.”
“They made you a Captain!”
“Yes, I am now Captain Chakotay! No more ‘Commander’ for me, we’re equal ranks.”
“It’s about time. I recommended so many promotions when we got back, and they hardly gave any of them. Those they did give were all the Starfleet crew, none of the Maquis.”
“And they got Tuvok twice!”
“That’s not my fault, or not entirely anyway, I only recommended the first one. He got Captain so quickly afterwards because we didn’t take the jobs on Voyager.”
“Still, it’s nice to have caught up again. Now I just have to make Admiral so I can start giving him orders again.”
“Hey, my turn first!”
“You had your chance, you turned it down.”
“I’m still not going to let you get to Admiral before me.”
“Still not willing to serve under me then?”
“That’s not what I said…”
She kissed him and pulled him on top of her, and he forgot all about his worst moment of the year for the time being…
***
Several hours later (yes, they’d been busy, but this is not an NC-17 – I don’t write them! – so no details), and Kathryn and Chakotay were again curled up on the couch. They had made time for lunch at some point, but neither could quite remember when. It just wasn’t important.
“Chakotay, you never did get around to telling me what your worst moment for this year was.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
“I must have got distracted.”
He started to kiss her again, but she pulled away.
“Don’t you ever stop?”
“Well, I could, but I don’t see why I should.”
“I want to hear about your year. Come on, tell me, what was your worst moment this year?”
“My worst moment? Actually,
this doesn’t have anything to do with Helen either.
It’s been a fairly uneventful year as far as the two of us has been
concerned, no dramas at all. This is more to do with my people. Have you been to Dorvan at all since we got back?”
“No. It
didn’t seem right, to go without you.”
“If you saw it now you might find it hard to see why
no-one was willing to leave, why we fought so hard to stay all those years ago.
But I’ve got used to it as it is now, at least I thought I had.
I went on a vision quest about three months ago.
This wasn’t just a normal quest, the sort in which I speak to my animal
guide, try and find the answers to my problems. It was special, I don’t really know how to explain it.”
“Try, I’d like to know.”
“Okay, here goes. When
a person from my tribe reaches a certain age they are supposed to journey to a
place called the Ta-Lun. I suppose
you could say it’s a sacred site, but it’s almost more than that.
Upon reaching the site we go on a quest, but without the aid of the
akoonah – it must be done with no aid whatsoever.
The quest is all about looking at the person you’ve become, whether
you’ve met your full potential and are true to yourself.
It has been said to provide those who are successful with a sense of
clarity and contentment which then helps them through the rest of their living
years. It is also said to be the time at which we gain the closest
contact with our ancestors.”
“Sounds amazing.”
“It’s supposed to be, but mine wasn’t.
It didn’t even happen. I
don’t know why no-one had found out before, maybe I was the first to try since
the end of the war with the Dominion, but the Ta-Lun had been completely
destroyed. The whole area had been
burnt out, and all that remained was the faint lingering smell of death. Plants, trees, animals – all were killed by whatever
happened. Literally nothing
survived, the place was dead.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing, there was nothing I could do.
It’s not as if I could choose somewhere else to go on my vision quest,
the place is part of the process. I
had to abandon it. It angered me
though, that there are still many consequences of the fight with the Cardassians
and the Dominion. They’re going
to continue to affect us for years to come.
I started to think if only I had been here, maybe I could have done
something to help…”
“Or maybe you’d be dead.”
“We don't know that.”
“Dead or in prison, and we would never have met. You’re just one person, you couldn’t have stopped what they did.”
“Doesn’t stop me wishing I’d had the chance.
I’m not sure it should.”
“So long as you don’t let guilt wash over into your
everyday life. If you go down that
road, it’s hard to turn back. I
don’t want to see that happening to you, promise me you won’t let it?”
“I promise.”
“Thank you. And
I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, for everything. For what the Federation did to your people, for what
Cardassia did to your people, or maybe just for the hurt it’s caused you.
I always supported the actions of the Federation to preserve the treaty,
'anything to prevent war'. I guess I
just didn’t think too hard about how some people’s lives were being
irrevocably changed.”
“You don’t need to be sorry, you acted in the way that
would have been expected from your background, your beliefs.
If you think differently now, that doesn’t matter.
Hindsight always makes things clearer, it’s a fact of life, but we
don’t have access to it at the time so we do the best we can and make
judgements with the information available to us.
You did that, and that’s all anyone could ask.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
***
That evening Kathryn and Chakotay lay in the garden staring up at the stars. It was a peaceful evening, as being so far from a major city there was none of the associated hullabaloo. Light pollution was also at a minimum. Despite the advances that had been made in street-lighting in recent times reducing the amount of light thrown upwards into the night sky, there was still nothing to beat looking up from a country location when the sky was clear and you could see stars in their thousands. Kathryn had never tired of looking at the stars from when she was a small child, even after all her years travelling through them. She wouldn't deny that it was comforting to look up at a familiar sky, but that wasn't the only appeal. It was amazing that what looked like tiny specks of light hanging against a dark background was actually an area of space teaming with life, and life that she had met. She and Chakotay had probably met more of it than most people had, just another thing they had to be thankful for. Well, most of the time anyway. There were a few races they could have been quite happily ignorant of their existance, the Kazon being the earliest example. They were too far away now to worry about though, that part of their lives was finished.
The evening was fairly mild, but there was still a distinguishable breeze that could be heard occasionally as it rustled the leaves on the trees. Any birds had long since gone to bed by the time Kathryn and Chakotay spoke a word, so their conversation cut into the silence like a knife.
"How often do you get to do this Chakotay?"
"Do what?"
"Lie and look up at the sky. Just relax, I suppose. I don't know, it's just so peaceful out here and I feel like I've been missing out on something."
"It is nice out here. I suppose I don't look up at the stars that often, just the occasional glance upwards if I'm walking out at night. I forget how beautiful the sky looks from Earth."
"I sometimes forget you didn't grow up here. Hang on, what do you mean 'how beautiful the sky looks from Earth'? Surely the stars don't look any less beautiful if you're looking from Dorvan?"
"I suppose not, there's just something about Earth even though it's not my home. I suppose it's still where my people came from, I'll always feel a link with the place."
"You're making it sound like you've got more of a link with Earth than Dorvan."
"Not more, just equal. Now, anyway. If you'd asked me back in my Academy days I'd probably have told you I'd never heard of Dorvan."
"And now you're living there again. Strange how things change, isn't it?"
Kathryn's comment was met with silence, and when she looked over to Chakotay he appeared to be deep in thought.
"Chakotay?"
He answered with a start. "Hmm? Sorry."
"Are you OK?"
"Yes, I was just thinking about what's changed in the last fifteen years, that's all. I don't think I'd have been able to predict any of it if you'd offered me, I don't know, something I'd have really wanted!"
"I can't believe you couldn't think of anything to finish that sentence! Actually, I take that back. You're about the only person who wouldn't be able to."
"You, on the other hand, would have said either all the coffee or all the bubble bath in the world!"
"The coffee, definitely the coffee. Besides, I think I already have all the bubble bath!"
They both smiled at each other, lost in memories of earlier that day.
"Chakotay, I think we should be going in soon. It's getting late."
"You're right. Here, help me up, I don't think I've got the will power to get up on my own."
Kathryn got up and held out her hand to help Chakotay get up beside her. Hand-in-hand, they made their way into the house.
"What time have you got to go tomorrow?"
"Not too late, I have to go to my mother's on the way home. She wanted me to spend the whole weekend there, but I managed to beat her down to just tomorrow afternoon. Still, I do have to go."
"Fair enough, I suppose. You want anything to eat or drink before we go to bed?"
"No thanks, I'm fine. You go ahead if you want anything though."
"No, I think I'm just going to collapse and go to sleep, it's been a lovely day but I'm exhausted." He emphasised his words by falling down onto the bed, still fully clothed.
"Come on Chakotay, at least take your clothes off."
"Get your mind out of the gutter!"
"That's not what I meant and you know it, I think you're you're the one with their mind in the gutter."
"Guilty as charged, what're you gonna do about it?"
"Straight to bed with you, I think."
"Just what I wanted. Now come on, get in, the bed's cold and I want you to warm me up."
"OK, I'm coming. There, that better?"
"Lots. Goodnight, Kathryn."
"Goodnight, Chakotay. Sweet dreams."
"You too."
***
Kathryn was up and ready to go early the next morning as promised. After a simple breakfast, she was just about ready to head out of the door.
"Well, here we are again."
"Yes Chakotay, here we are again."
"So are we still on for no goodbyes?"
"If you don't mind, but can we say 'see you next year'? I mean, if you want to, can we assume that both of us are going to be here next year? I'll be here, but I don't want to turn up here and find someone else in this cottage."
"You'll find me. If somehow I'm not staying in this cottage I'll wait outside on the Friday evening until you get here. You're not going to get rid of me now."
"Good, because I don't want to. So..."
"So..."
"Until next year."
"Until next year."
"I love you."
"I love you."
Kathryn walked out the door and didn't look back.
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To be continued...
