Snacks for the Journey

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Star Trek: Voyager

Copyright: Paramount

"I brought you some snacks for the journey."

Neelix tentatively held up a yellow bag for Kes. Their color – the color of their hair, of sunlight, of the desert sand where they had first met. The color of joy and warmth and comfort. The old woman on the transporter platform took it absently.

"Do you still like leola root?"

"Thank you." She nodded. It was an old joke between them that she hated his cooking; in reality, she had always encouraged him in his pursuit of culinary art. Did she remember his trademark Jimballian fudge cakes, with the neon-blue icing, which he had baked for the first three birthdays of her life?

Whether she did or not, he'd packed one anyway.

"What?" she asked.

"Just looking."

She looked so – not only old, but exhausted. Her gray hair stood up in tufts as if she'd run irritated fingers through it, and her face was set in hard, bitter lines. Only her eyes were familiar, blue as the sky she'd once longed for, looking back at him with an expression he couldn't read.

She was still beautiful, like a spring flower caught by an unexpected frost. But if only he had been there to watch the silver strands grow in her hair, to kiss away all the frowns that had formed those lines!

"See anyone you know?" she asked dryly.

Yes. No. She was his own Kes, and yet a stranger. She hadn't even come to look for him – instead, driven half-mad by years of struggling with her mental powers, she had come to drag Voyager back in time and deliver it to the Vidiians. And she had left it to Captain Janeway to explain to a terrified Neelix, picking up shattered dishes in the mess hall, what had happened.

His Kes would never have done that.

And yet she had accepted his bag of food.

"Only you," said Neelix.

"Goodbye, Kes," said the Captain, standing next to them. The lump in his throat did not permit Neelix to speak.

"Captain," said Kes, with a nod to her former mentor. Nothing for Neelix – no hug, no kiss, not even a word.

They watched her shimmer out of sight in a haze of blue, and then everything else was shimmering through the veil of Neelix's tears.

All I wanted was to take care of her, this fairy-woman who was so innocent, yet so wise. If she had let me, I would have made her a bright blue cake for every birthday of her life.

Instead, I can only give her snacks for the journey.