Warning: Character death

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A quoi bon tout cela?

Tous des mots superflus.

What good is all of this?

Meaningless words.

Kathryn Janeway stood at the holding room window. She could see her reflection in it, the pale skin and the radiant blue of her eyes. She thought she looked like a china doll.

"I've watched you so many times, like this," she heard him say. The investigations bureau had confiscated her Starfleet jacket, and she wore only the sleeveless gray undershirt. Her hands were on the ledge, her arms wide apart, straight and stiff.

"What did you want to do?"

She waited, barely breathing, knowing that this was a test of her sanity, perhaps even a harbinger of how long she had left to live. She felt certain that he would come closer, that his hands would touch her shoulders - that they would travel down the length of her arms, and intertwine with her hands, just as they had…

But when she opened her eyes and dared herself to turn around, she found that he was standing the entire length of the room away. He caught her eye then stopped to leave a few computer pads on the otherwise bare table. His comment about watching her, she realized, must have been meant more for himself than for her.

"Apparently," he said, "the two of us attempted to sabotage a highly sensitive international security initiative to contain a potentially lethal biohazard."

"A biohazard."

"That's their story and they're sticking with it. I know it sounds like a joke."

"It is a joke, Chakotay."

"One that may very well cost us our careers and our freedom. You need to understand that Starfleet is not the same organization it was when you left Earth seven years ago."

"If it was that way to begin with. Who knows how long this has been going on? Seven years may have been nothing. Maybe we were just lucky."

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"My toxicology screen came back."

His eyes widened. "What did it say?"

"It found no trace of Psychic Sisters, or any other drug."

"I don't understand. Owen Paris told me that they gave it to you. Why would he admit to that if it weren't true?"

She leaned back against the ledge. "Believe me, I've been asking myself the same question. Of course, there's the possibility that the test could have been wrong. Maybe I was given a negligible amount, or maybe it just didn't show up on the test. But the other possibility is that Paris thought the drug was administered to me when it wasn't. He couldn't have overseen the procedure - it would have looked extremely suspicious if he had been hanging around the medical facility during routine physical exams."

"Then how do you explain the premonitions you had? Your connection to Apocrypha - the hidden map - all of it. If you weren't drugged, how did those things happen?"

She smiled. "I guess you'll never believe that I actually am psychic?"

"It's nothing against you, Kathryn. But people don't grow psychic abilities out of nowhere."

"I just find it interesting that you of all people would be skeptical about this."

"What does that mean?"

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "You've always been open-minded, especially about spirituality and paranormal experiences. Why is it so hard for you to believe that something of that nature could happen to me?

"Do you… consider that you've had a spiritual transformation of some kind?"

She laughed. "Don't sound so shocked! Am I the last person in the world that such a thing would happen to?"

"No - that's not what I -"

"What do you mean? Ever since this happened to me you've been trying to find some explanation other than the fact that I could possibly be psychic. No matter how far-fetched. You had me believing I was mentally ill."

"You believed that on your own."

Kathryn gestured impatiently. "Only because I felt different, and I couldn't explain it. I still do feel different. That hasn't gone away."

"All right… Different how?"

Her voice was softer. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I know that I see things differently. It's as if all of the things that were hidden before have become illuminated somehow, but at the expense of what I knew to be true. Starfleet was my whole life, and just like that, it's over. What I thought I'd find on Voyager I could only find on Iberia. I looked in the mirror, and I saw it. There was a time when returning to Earth was all I wanted. But now…"

"Now you know there is another purpose out there for you. You know what you have to do, and what you have to fight for."

She stared at him. "Exactly."

In that moment, suddenly, he recognized her again. She was once again the woman he had always known, the face of an angel and the heart of a soldier.

"If you get out of here…"

"No. When we get out of here."

Slowly, he joined her by the window. "Kathryn, you know there was a time for me to follow you – that I would have done anything, no questions asked. But I can't do that anymore."

There was a pause. "I see…"

"I can't take on this crusade with you. It's too hard. Maybe I could have done it then, but not now."

"What are you saying – that you want to forget everything you know about Starfleet, everything we've seen? You want to just walk away from it?"

"I don't know – except I know I have to let you go. And I have to find my own way. This is your fight. You know it's true, Kathryn. I can't love you unless I let you go."

"If you're going to break my heart, you could at least look at me while you're doing it."

He took her in his arms. "I never meant to," he whispered. "But it's no use. Kathryn, don't you see it's no use?"

"No use…" she repeated blankly, the words causing her terrible pain even as she spoke them.

On the right side of her face, there was a scar from the Starfleet attack that the doctors who treated her could not repair. He took her face in his hands and kissed the scar.

It struck him at that moment that his idea of living any kind of conventional life with her had always been misplaced and unrealistic. It was as if he had never before understood that the most precious things in life are not those we are capable of controlling or even keeping – that they are almost always out of reach and fading, hidden away, but never forgotten.

PAGE BREAK

The next morning, word spread over official channels that Owen Paris had died of respiratory failure.

The gentleman who was to succeed him as director of communications was a rather white-haired Fleet Admiral with a distinguished record. His most recent act of bravery was a mission to contain a biological threat, the details of which, not surprisingly, were highly classified.

THE END