What Will Survive

A/N: My 38th birthday is swiftly approaching, which probably explains this little piece. Big thanks to MissyHissy3 for the beta read!

The two away teams materialised, one after another, into the inky blue-blackness of pre-dawn. Chakotay took a breath and tasted salt on his lips even as he listened to the crash of surf behind him. He could smell it: brine and the slight decay of watery once-living things that were always left in the wake of a tide going out. The ship had put them down close to this planet's southern ocean, a good hike away from the large cliff face hewn out of an escarpment of sandy rock that was the crew of the Starship Voyager's current primary concern. Chakotay saw Tom Paris turning wistfully in the direction of the water and smiled slightly. With any luck – and surely if any being alive deserved some, it was the crew of Voyager – later there would be time to indulge the Lieutenant's passion for alien oceans. But right now there were more pressing issues to address.

The first officer looked over at their Captain. Above their heads, the sky was now beginning to fade through varying strata of a brilliant crimson, resolving improbably to an incandescent yellow over the distant horizon as day began to push out night. Janeway's face was turned toward these colours and for a moment Chakotay wondered what she was thinking: that she would love the chance to capture them in paint, perhaps. She rarely had the time, but every now and then he knew that Kathryn still liked to drag out her easel and canvasses. He made a mental note to suggest it as a project once they were back under way: anything that would provide her with a welcome diversion from their daily life aboard ship was worth pursuing.

Seconds later, she turned in his direction, the faint smile that had been there replaced by a familiar look of determination.

"Ready, Commander?"

"Aye, Captain."

She lifted an arm and indicated the line of cliffs that were their destination, separated from their current position by a forest of dense, conifer-like trees. "Then let's move out."

The ship's supply of dilithium was running dangerously low. Sensor readings had indicated that the escarpment for which they were headed might contain harvestable seams of the mineral they needed, but there was some other unidentified element that made beaming in closer inadvisable. In truth, Chakotay was glad of the enforced walk despite the urgency of the mission – he took long strides, enjoying the feel of true air on his face for the first time in far too long. As they walked the sun rose over their heads into a brilliant blue sky that he was happy to be beneath instead of above. For all the wonders space travel afforded, there was also something to be said for keeping one's feet on the ground.

The landscape through which they trekked was wilderness, but Chakotay knew from their sensor readings that this had not always been so. There had been a civilisation here once, a great one that spread over the planet in its entirety. As he walked he looked for signs on the surface – anything to substantiate what Voyager's readings had indicated, but there was nothing. The patterns his archaeologist's eyes had read in the lines and contours on his computer screen had shown a complexity of inhabitation to rival any on Earth, or Kronos, or Cardassia Prime, or Vulcan. Yet here, on the surface, there was nothing to be seen: neither scar nor scab, neither monument nor memorial. Any visitor to this place without the benefit of Voyager's powerful sensor array wouldn't know that anyone had ever set foot here before.

That something of such magnitude could vanish without trace seemed impossible, yet Chakotay knew it to be otherwise. He had seen the evidence with his own eyes and learned early just how fragile a civilisation's status really was. On Earth it had taken fewer than 40 years to wipe out 90 per cent – 90 per cent! In 40 years! Barely more than the span of Chakotay's own life! – of the inhabitants of the ancient and all-but forgotten Honduran city-civilisation known to archaeologists as T1. The insidious bite of disease had wrought what the Conquistadors themselves would have been unable to accomplish in a city fortified beyond all possible attack. Chakotay didn't have to imagine what it was to watch, helpless, as generations of your people – your past and your future - died around you in what was barely more than a blink of an eye. He knew the trauma caused by such casual brutality, he carried the weight of it with him in the dark places he kept hidden deep within himself. Back in the Alpha Quadrant, the fate of the entire planetoid of Caris II was a cautionary tale taught early in the academy: a space-age version of T1 with a different outcome only because Federation doctors had rallied to the cause. History repeats itself whether we want it to or not, he thought then, and all we can change is our reaction to it.

Had something similar happened here, Chakotay wondered, as he listened to the quiet chatter of the team following behind him. Had a single visitor, benevolent or otherwise, unwittingly sparked an unstoppable collapse? Or had it been caused by other forces – a decline in resources sparked by a change in climate, a deliberate exodus led by too much youth seeking what space could offer, internal or external political upheaval? He wanted to know while simultaneously being aware that anything he could discover would be mere speculation, even if it were informed by a plethora of unearthed facts. Once a thing is gone, its actuality becomes as uncertain as its future. The memory cheats and time moves inexorably onwards, obscuring the past even as it is overlaid by the future. Chakotay's knowledge of this fact informed his life: live now, while you can, wherever you can, however you can, because the future will erase whatever unquantifiable notion you are waiting for without a single pause.

Still, Chakotay looked at the loamy ground beneath his feet and he wondered. Who were you? What were your talents, your crafts, your artworks? How did you celebrate greatness? Who were your gods, your monsters? How did you demonstrate love? How did you inculcate your children? How did you choose your rulers, or did you not choose them at all? What is the truth of you?

Chakotay asked these questions while knowing that they were entirely unanswerable and that moreover he was really asking them of own his future self. A self that, by the time anyone thought to ask, would be as invisible as the forgotten civilisation he now looked for in the untilled soil of a nameless world.

A shout from the team ahead of him signalled that they had reached the cliff face. For the first time he saw evidence of what he had sought on the ground: the mouths of caves that had clearly been widened by means other than natural erosion. The people of this planet had obviously mined here. They could only hope that what the inhabitants had searched for and possibly exhausted in antiquity was not the mineral the visiting crew of Voyager now hoped to find for themselves.

The fat seams of dilithium revealed themselves in winding, nerve-like twists of greyish-black fused into the mine's hewn walls. The two teams had separated soon after arrival in order to maximise coverage, time and labour. First they had surveyed the horizontal shafts, looking out for weaknesses in the rough walls that could spell danger for their personnel, but the mines seemed untroubled by fragility or collapse and so work commenced apace. Soon loads of the unrefined mineral were making their way into the open air and out towards the beam-out point, ready to be received aboard by the chief engineer's teams, standing by to begin the refining process.

The day was long and exhausting, yet Chakotay revelled in the feeling of hard-worked muscles. This was despite the inevitable aches he could expect in the days to come and the insidious, nagging feeling that he surely used to find work of this kind far easier. Age is just a state of mind, he told himself, while also remaining convinced that nothing could be further from the truth.

Together, he and the Captain had agreed to call frequent breaks for air and water. Yet whenever he himself went to the surface, she was not there. The shadows lengthened as the day drew on and the loads of dilithium sent back to Voyager multiplied.

"B'Elanna says that at this rate, we'll be able to restock our entire supply and then some," Tom Paris reported, slightly breathless as he returned from guiding the latest load.

"That's good news," Chakotay told him, passing Tom a bottle of water and wiping one hand across his own sweating brow. "Although I don't know how much more there is to mine, at least not in the current shafts. I'm pretty sure we're close to exhausting the seam we're working at the moment."

Paris nodded, one hand on his hip as he gulped water and then sloppily wiped his mouth with a gasp. "Well, perhaps we should open up some more shafts," the younger man suggested. "We haven't had any downtime planetside for a while. Maybe the Captain will think about us staying here for a week or two. We can mine as much dilithium as we can in between exploring the place a bit more."

Chakotay smiled. "Thinking about that ocean back there?"

Tom shrugged, then offered a grin. "Don't tell me you couldn't do with a few days with your toes in the soil instead of on Starfleet-issue carpet, Commander," he said. "I saw your face light up when Voyager's sensor reports came through. Bet you're just itching to get out a sonic trowel and start grubbing through the undergrowth."

Chakotay's smiled widened and he shook his head. "Let's just see where we're at by the end of today, shall we?"

"Aye, sir," said Paris, handing back the water bottle.

"Commander?"

The voice was Ayala's. The lieutenant had been assigned to Janeway's mining detail. Chakotay shielded his eyes against the dipping sun's glare and watched as his old friend approached. Behind Ayala, the rest of the Captain's team was spilling out of into the late afternoon sunlight, though of the woman herself there was no sign.

"Ayala? Everything all right?"

Ayala nodded, snagging a water bottle from the waiting pile as he passed. "Everything's fine, but we've almost exhausted our seam."

"Ours, too."

Ayala scrubbed grit from his hair. "We think we've found the beginnings of another, but… well. The Captain's asking for you, so you can see for yourself. Just follow the shaft left at the first fork. You'll find her." Chakotay raised an eyebrow but Ayala just shrugged and picked up a second bottle, holding it out to him. "Take her that," his friend suggested. "I'm guessing she needs it as much as any of us."

Chakotay nodded, unhooked his flashlight from where it hung at his waist, and made for the mine's entrance.

Inside, the shaft the Captain's team had been working was more cramped than the one he and his own team had been in. In several places, Chakotay had to duck to make his way beneath the low carved roof. His footfall echoed against the dust of the stone he walked on, but he could hear no other sound.

"Captain?" he called.

Her voice came to him from some distance ahead, strong in tone though soft from distance. "Here, Chakotay."

A few moments later a glow rose towards him from the darkness ahead: Kathryn's own flashlight. When Chakotay reached her he saw that she had placed it on the ground to free up both of her hands, though she wasn't wielding her phaser, as she would do to mine a lode. The Captain stood with her back to him, dust in her hair and across her shoulders, her hands flat against the rock before her.

"Captain?"

"Look," she said and this time the softness in her voice wasn't distance.

Chakotay stepped closer and saw that her hands were framing marks in the stone. His heart leapt against his ribcage at the surprise of it, the delight.

"Petroglyphs," he exclaimed.

Kathryn nodded and dropped her hands to her side with a smile. Chakotay moved closer still, until he was leaning over her right shoulder, his bigger hand framing the carved shapes even as hers had done a moment earlier.

"We saw nothing like this in our shaft," he murmured, enchanted by the shape of the scratched symbols.

Kathryn shook her head, her hair brushing his shoulder. "We haven't come across anything else similar, either. Since finding this one I've retraced where we've worked and there's nothing. Just these."

Chakotay was engrossed, eyes tracing the shapes, trying to work them out. They didn't appear to be images – at least, they didn't depict outlines indicative of any kind of creature, real or spirit. They lined up close beside one another: thin, deep scrapes at angles to each other, connection denoted by proximity. Below the first group was a second, and between them a single symbol.

"I wonder if this is an example of their language," Chakotay said. "These could be letters, spelling words."

"That's what I thought," Janeway said. "Actually – and I know that I have no basis to assume this, but – I think that perhaps they're names."

Chakotay looked at her face, then. It too was rimed in dust. It glittered on her cheekbones, along the fine slope of her nose. "Names?"

Kathryn smiled wryly. "Of course you'd know better than I would, Chakotay. Perhaps it's only that I'd like them to be names."

"What do you mean?"

Janeway reached out a finger and gently traced one group of carved lines, then the other. Then, finally, she touched the symbol between. "When I was twelve, Jackson Wright carved my name next to his on the apple tree in his parent's garden," she said. "With a heart in between."

Chakotay smiled. "You think this is two lovers, doing the same? It could be, certainly. Two miners, working together perhaps. A husband and wife? A new couple? Who knows?"

Kathryn sighed heavily and dropped her hand. She was quiet for a moment. They stood still, in the flickering darkness inside a rock made of age itself.

"Sometimes I wonder, Chakotay, what I am leaving behind," she said. "I have no children and I'm not likely to now. Even if we make it back to the Alpha Quadrant… what mark will I leave? What will there be to remember me once I am no more? What will survive of what I am now, of what my life has been? If a civilisation such as the one that made these mines can vanish so completely, what hope is there for our little lives?"

Chakotay smiled again, despite the maudlin measure of her words. He wondered, sometimes, if the fact that their thoughts were so often simpatico should worry him. But more often, he found it comforting. He shifted closer, until their arms pressed together, a warmth like sunlight in the touch of their limbs. He waited for her to speak, to connect her thoughts of herself to her thoughts of what had been etched in front of them unknown eons before.

"This seam is done with, but according to the tricorder readings there's another lode behind here," she said, her voice scratching softly in the quiet as she waved her hand at the rock before them. "But to get to it we would have to blast this out, and with it this petroglyph."

He nodded. "I see."

"It makes no sense to abandon the resources we need for our own survival because of this," she said, quietly. "Historically it can't tell us anything. It's just a fragment. And yet…"

"And yet," he agreed.

She raised her hand again, framing the ancient phrase with her fingers. "They can't possibly have known," she said. "They can't possibly have known, when they were carving their names like this, that this would be all that would survive of them."

He moved closer still. Then, without giving himself a chance to second-guess the motion, he reached out and covered her hand with his.

"But they have survived," Chakotay pointed out. "Here they are, in the stone, whoever they were. They were loved and they loved in turn. What else does survive of us, whoever we are and whatever we leave, in the end?"

"I don't want to destroy this," she said, still standing beneath his arm, her back warm where it was pressed against him.

"We don't have to. We'll find another lode. There must be others."

"But that will take time. And after all…"

"After all what?" Chakotay asked, shifting slightly to look down at her face. Her eyelashes batted dust as she blinked, her angles soft in cast shadow.

"They might not be names," she said.

"I believe they are," he told her. "And I believe they should survive."

She dropped her hand from beneath his and nodded. "The crew could do with some downtime," she murmured. "Let's stay here awhile. Find another seam."

Chakotay smiled. "It's a good idea, Captain," he said. Then he put his hands to her face and brushed away the dust of her day's work from her cheeks.

In the end, Voyager remained in orbit for a week. On the second day of their sojourn, Chakotay quietly sought and found a stone large enough to hold both their names. It took him seven days of quietude to carve it, and he used not a heart to join them, but the symbol for infinity. This was fitting, he thought, given her scientist's mind and his people's hopeful blood. He never showed it to Kathryn and he never told her he'd done it, but on their last night on the planet, Chakotay dropped it into the ocean of that unnamed world. It would stay there until the motion of two eternities finally tumbled their names, not into oblivion, but into sand, another state that endures for millennia, as does the most abiding love.

[END]

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

(from Philip Larkin's An Arundel Tomb)