Broken Hearts

by mizvoy

Chapter 7

March 9, 2379

Terazed V

Chakotay stood in the shade of the sun fly fingering the isolinear chip in his pocket as he watched a pair of birds circle high overhead. The courier had brought the chip across the divide with the daily supplies, and Chakotay hoped it was a message from Kathryn. She’d contacted him less and less often in the last few weeks, and he was worried that her silence might be a bad omen. Distracted by his thoughts, he picked up his scanner and absently began to check its settings.

Rex Detmer, his partner at the dig, looked up at him from inside the tent and shook his head in dismay. He stood up, took the scanner from him, and gestured toward their camp. “Chakotay, you might as well go read the message. We both know you won’t get a thing accomplished until you do. You haven’t heard from her in three or four days, right?”

“It might not even be from her,” Chakotay protested, embarrassed that Rex so easily guessed the source of his melancholy. “Maybe it’s from work.”

Rex grinned, remembering the flurry of messages between his partner and Kathryn Janeway in their ten-week stay on Terazed. “I’m betting it’s from her. I haven’t seen such devoted pen pals since I went to college and left my best gal at home.”

“It’s not like that, Rex,” Chakotay argued, aware of a hot blush crawling up his neck. “We served together every day for over seven years on Voyager, and we’re used to talking to each other on a regular basis.”

“Well, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Rex studied him, wondering if he knew how obvious it was that he was in love with his former captain. “We’re almost finished for the day. Go read it, Chakotay. I’ll clean up. I don’t have an hour’s work here.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.” He clapped Rex on the shoulder and started up the hill to the tents that had been his home for over two months. Soon enough, he’d slide the chip into a reader and find out if it was, in fact, from Kathryn.

Chakotay believed that the statement “absence makes the heart grow fonder” was a truism that was both naïve and erroneous. His experience in Starfleet had proven that absence merely gave each party the opportunity to fall for someone new. Of course, that statement assumed that the couple was romantically involved before the separation occurred. In this case, he and Kathryn had shared the same close friendship they’d had for so many years on Voyager.

His relationship with Kathryn Janeway had never fit a mold and had developed in starts and stops over the years. Once they’d returned to the Alpha Quadrant, he’d expected that they would grow apart, that their busy lives would interfere with the intimacy of their partnership on Voyager, but he had suddenly found himself caught up in her past, fascinated and troubled by her history.

The three months following her crisis in his apartment had been stressful for Kathryn and everyone who knew her. Reading and accepting the facts of the accident report constituted the beginning of a long, painful process toward healing, and Kathryn had been relentless in pursuing the truth once she’d opened her mind to it. Chakotay had supported her every way he could.

He remembered the night that Kathryn arrived at his door in mid-October, just two weeks after their first emotional discussion of the Terra Nova accident. The doorbell rang just after midnight on a blustery rainy night, and he opened the door to find her shivering in the darkness, wearing nothing but a dripping sweat suit and tennis shoes, a look of panic on her face.

“I should have called ahead,” she stammered, her teeth chattering in the cold. “I left my apartment in such a rush that I didn’t even check the time, and it just occurred to me that you might be asleep.”

“Whether I’m awake or not doesn’t matter. If you need to see me, just come see me.” He opened the door farther and invited her in. He knew that she would only come to his apartment in the middle of the night for good reason. “Come in before you freeze.”

She changed out of her wet clothes and into a set of his own warm fleece workout gear while her things dried in the ‘fresher, and then sat down in front of the fire with a big mug of hot tea. He smiled at the sight of a Starfleet admiral wearing oversized clothing with the arms and legs rolled up, looking like a waif he might have rescued from the cold. As he sat down beside her, he hoped her impromptu visit was not a signal of another difficult, tearful night.

She talked excitedly about the counseling she’d undergone, thanking him again for making her come to terms with her guilt and move ahead with her life. She told him that he was right when he said she needed to go through the grieving process if she hoped to find closure, and then she said, “My counselor thinks your suggestion is the answer.”

“My suggestion?” He thought about what she could mean, and then realized that she must want to have a memorial at long last. Tremendously relieved by this turn of events, he gave her a grin. “A memorial? This is very good news. Having a ceremony would do all of you a lot of good, even Phoebe and your mom. Every culture has these rites to help those left behind say their farewells and move on.”

“That’s what I’m hoping, although I’m afraid I’ll always be haunted by survivor’s guilt.”

“Once you’ve faced reality, you can learn to deal with it. I have a confession to make.” He waited as she looked up at him expectantly. “I’m still haunted by survivor guilt, and I still have nightmares, though they’ve grown less frequent over the years.”

“Nightmares about what happened to your family?”

He nodded. “I told you that I went to Dorvan right after I resigned from Starfleet and that I performed the funeral rites of my people as an act of closure, but I never told you what I found on the planet.” He closed his eyes as the memory of the devastation assaulted him, and Kathryn put a hand on his arm in comfort.

“I saw what the Cardassians did to Bajor,” she said. “If Dorvan was anything like that, I can imagine how terrible it must have been.”

He shook his head. “I saw what they did to Bajor, too, stealing their valuable mineral deposits, ruining their farmland, enslaving the populace, using its star system for their tactical advantage against the Federation. Since Dorvan offered them no such value, they showed no such restraint.”

“Restraint?” She set the mug on the table and turned toward him on the sofa. “Worse than Bajor?”

“I’d hoped to find the remains of my people to use in the tribal memorial ceremony. Oh, I knew the bodies would probably be gone, but I thought I could use some artifacts to represent them–a blanket, a cooking pot, a bit of clothing.” He paused, his face a mask of pain. “There was nothing left on the planet that would indicate it had ever been populated. The few scattered villages were totally gone, as were the roads connecting them. The buildings were pulverized into dust, and the people . . . .” Tears sprung to his eyes. “There weren’t even ashes left behind. There was nothing there. They didn’t leave single trace.”

“My God,” she whispered, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. “I had no idea the destruction was so complete.”

“I felt so guilty that they were killed like that, like worthless, diseased animals, murdered without remorse or respect. All I could think was that I should have done something, anything, to protect them from such evil.”

“You warned them, Chakotay. You sent them a message advising them to return to Trebus when the Federation withdrew their active support of the colony. Right?”

“I tried to warn them. I sent my family a message, but I’d lost my father’s confidence. He felt I had deserted my people and had no right to advise to them. He was the oldest son in our line, and as his oldest son, it was my duty to counsel them, but I was to do so every day, in all things, not just once in twenty years from half a galaxy away.”

“But you tried to warn them, at least.”

He closed his eyes sadly. “I remember quite well my father’s response, at least I remember what my younger sister, Rianna, reported to me. She said she played my warning for him on the equipment I’d sent them, and he listened impassively. At first she thought he hadn’t grasped the meaning of my words. I spoke in Federation Standard, not in our native language, and he often pretended not to understand. When the message ended, he looked up at her and said, ‘There’s a buzzing in my ears. The insects are bad this summer.’ And then he left the house and refused to let her play the warning again.”

Kathryn shook her head in dismay. “Rianna is the sister who survived?”

“Yes. She moved to Trebus to get married a few weeks before the attack. She’s the only blood relative I have left.”

“Oh, Chakotay. I know I’ve said this before, but I’m so sorry.”

“Like you, Kathryn, I feel guilty for being alive when those I loved died so senselessly. I even contemplated suicide.” He took her hand, rubbing it absently as he spoke. “You directed your guilt inward and focused your energies on your career as a way to atone for your guilt. I simply became angry and dedicated myself to revenge as a member of the Maquis. At least the ceremony let me express my regrets and honor them as my people are accustomed to doing.”

“So it was a positive experience in spite of everything?”

He nodded. “It was a gesture, but an important one.”

“Good,” she brightened considerably, gripping his hand tightly. “Then you’ll help me?”

“I’d be happy to help you with the ceremony.”

“Not the ceremony–that will be a standard Starfleet service. I want you to help me recover the bodies.”

He felt the blood rush from his face. “After all this time?”

“The crash occurred in the polar ice cap. The heat of the ship’s reentry melted the upper layer of the ocean. Once the ship sank, the ice reformed and preserved the bodies.” At his incredulous look, she continued. “Starfleet studied the ship from the surface when they were investigating the crash, and the scans indicated that the bodies were perfectly preserved. But, Dad always said that a crash site should be the burial site, and so Mom told them to leave the bodies there.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to recover them now?”

“Our tradition is to bury the remains, Chakotay.”

“And you mean to recover the bodies yourself?”

“Since they died in the line of duty, Starfleet has agreed to provide any assistance needed, and I think the ceremony would be much more meaningful if we actually buried the bodies. Don’t you?” She looked up at him, hope in her eyes.

“I guess so. But, do you think it’s a good idea for you to return to the scene of the accident? What does your counselor say about this?”

She narrowed her eyes slightly, resorting to the bravado she used whenever he challenged one of her ideas. “I haven’t talked to her about it yet, because it just occurred to me. But, I can’t imagine sitting here at home and letting someone else retrieve them. In fact, I need to do it, Chakotay, for quite a few reasons.”

“You won’t let me do it for you?” he volunteered, even though he recognized the obstinacy he’d seen dozens of times on Voyager. She’d made up her mind, and the best he could do was to go with her and help her with whatever problems that beset her in the process. When he saw the cold blue of her eyes, he sighed in resignation. “All right, I’ll help you.”

A few weeks later, they traveled to Tau Ceti, perhaps the coldest planet Chakotay had ever visited. After the orbiting ship melted the upper surface of the frozen ocean with carefully controlled phaser blasts, he and Kathryn transported down to watch as the forward section of the Terra Nova was tractored to the surface of the icy black water and beamed to the cargo hold on the ship. Fortunately, the bodies still trapped inside were not visible as the fractured ship rose to the surface. Chakotay shuddered to think how Kathryn might have reacted to a scene so close to her familiar nightmare–the ship sticking up from the water with the faces of the two men visible to her.

Kathryn lingered near the shattered ice cap a long time after the salvage operation ended, and Chakotay waited silently by her side until he could no longer feel his fingers and toes in spite of the Starfleet arctic gear he wore. When he could stand the cold no longer, he broke the silence. “Kathryn, is there anything else you want to do here? We should beam back to the ship pretty soon, don’t you think?”

She’d jerked at his words, as if she’d forgotten that there was anyone with her, and then she’d turned to him. “I’d like to see where they found me.”

“That can be done.” He reached for his commbadge. “I’ll have the ship beam us there.”

“No,” she insisted, shaking her head. “I want to walk.”

“But, Kathryn, it’s quite a hike in this cold.”

Here eyes were impassive, and he knew there would be no compromise. “The exercise will warm us up.”

He’d anticipated that something like this might occur, so he opened his tricorder, called up the coordinates, and led her away from the rescue site. Although the hike was only a couple of kilometers, the rough terrain slowed them down. They had to go around huge fissures in the ice, skirt regions that were too slick to cross, and climb mound after mound of drifted snow and ice. It was arduous work that extended a short hike into nearly an hour of steady walking, climbing, and occasional spectacular falls. When they arrived at the second site, Chakotay was sweating profusely, sore from more than one tumble, and out of breath. At least, he thought, Kathryn had been correct about the hike warming them up.

They stood still, watching their breaths plume out before them as they took in the new location, and each drank the last of the water they’d brought with them. Chakotay studied the readout on his tricorder, oriented himself to the landmarks, and pointed toward a snow drift that towered overhead. “The aft section was over there,” he told her, “bottom down against that cliff.” He took a few steps away from her. “You were found just about here, face down in the snow.”

She walked to the spot in the snow that he’d indicated, and then she looked back toward their previous location. The recovery site was blocked from view by two long ridges of ice and snow.

“I couldn’t have seen them sink into the water from here.”

“No, you couldn’t have. Not at this distance or from this perspective.”

“And I couldn’t have walked to them, either.”

“Over the terrain we just covered?” Chakotay laughed. “You were badly injured, Kathryn. It took us an hour to walk here, and we’re in good health.”

She’d turned to him, her eyes troubled. “But, Chakotay, the nightmare seems so real to me. I can see the ship sinking. I can see their faces.”

“That’s the way nightmares are, Kathryn. They take fragments from our reality and reshape them to fit some perverse notion of their own.” He put his arm around her. “I’m sure you wanted to save them, and so your subconscious created a scenario where you had that chance. It just wasn’t true.”

“The counselor thinks I might have overheard the doctors and nurses talking about the crash site when I was in and out of consciousness right after my rescue. I probably misunderstood what they said, or my mind took some of the facts I heard and changed them into what I wanted them to be.”

“Well, however it happened, now you know the truth.”

She shivered, as if she had finally become conscious of the cold, or perhaps because she was finally seeing the accident as it had actually occurred. “I know the truth. I just have to convince myself to believe it.”

As difficult as the trip to Tau Ceti had been, the recovery of the remains was not the most distressing event she’d endured during that critical mourning period. The bodies were in good enough condition to allow for open caskets, if the family desired. When they initially decided against it, Chakotay had been relieved, but then Kathryn opted for a quick, private viewing. He tried to talk her out of it, telling her that nothing could prepare her for the shock of seeing her father’s and Justin’s bodies after all these years. He believed she was asking too much of herself, but she’d insisted that she needed to see them as a necessary step in the grieving process and to convince herself that they were gone.

The graveside memorial service took place on a cold, grey November day that threatened snow. Chakotay was the only non-Janeway invited, and so he’d kept to the fringes of the gathering, satisfied to watch the event from a respectful distance. Before they’d left the mortuary, Kathryn had avoided looking into the caskets, and he’d fervently hoped she’d changed her mind, but then, putting her arms around Gretchen’s and Phoebe’s waists, she’d approached the remains as Chakotay watched, holding his breath. She paused between the two caskets for a moment as if frozen, and then she’d quickly turned away from the sight, slipping her sunglasses into place to disguise her distress, and he’d ground his teeth in frustration. She was upset, just as he had thought she would be, and he wished he’d been more vocal about his objection.

She seemed to operate on “auto-pilot” the rest of the day, standing like a phantom between her mother and Phoebe during the graveside service and responding in monosyllables to expressions of comfort during the meal that followed. She was silent when he escorted her back to her apartment in San Francisco, although she spoke just enough to tell him how much she’d appreciated his support in the last several weeks, and then she gave him a fierce hug as he prepared to leave.

“My counselor believes I’m going to recover completely,” she told him as he left her at her door, lifting her head with defiant determination. “And Starfleet is giving me some time to focus on my treatment.”

“I hope so, Kathryn. If anyone can do it, you can.” He’d given her a last gentle hug, kissed her on the top of the head, and left her there, alone, to face her demons.

It was good luck that the service occurred when it did, because the preparations for Voyager’s first reunion in December had provided some much-needed distraction in the ensuing weeks. A surprisingly large number of the crew was still in the area, and the love and affection that they showered on their former captain had done much to soothe her aching soul. But the reunion had also reminded her of the isolation and loneliness she’d endured during those seven years, and it reopened dozens of unhealed wounds and unforgotten regrets that threatened to spiral her into another depression.

Disturbed by her fragility, Chakotay was ready to cancel his planned trip to Terazed when Kathryn’s counselor had called him and told him that it was time for her to face her grief without his help. “She needs time alone to grieve and come to terms with her past,” the counselor said. “Only after she does that will she be ready to move forward.”

And so, just days after the reunion ended, Chakotay left for his three-month dig on Terrazed V. Leaving her had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. He’d spent his last day with her in Indiana, and the snow and ice they’d walked through as she’d accompanied him to the transport station that day had been a painful reminder of their visit to Tau Ceti a few weeks earlier.

As if she’d read his mind, Kathryn had gently reassured him that he had nothing to worry about. She’d taken his arm affectionately and given him a brilliant smile with no shadow of remorse. “This is what winter is like in Indiana, Chakotay. It seems like a normal part of home to me.”

He’d gone over these memories dozens of times since his arrival on Terrazed, often lying awake for hours gazing through a flap in his tent at the brilliant stars overhead. She’d shown no hint of panic or depression, and, at first, he’d been encouraged by her behavior. But then, as time passed, he began to wonder if she wanted him to go so she could distance herself from him or if she missed him half as much as he missed her.

They’d promised to keep in touch, but they soon discovered that it was impossible to talk via subspace because of the discrepancies in their work schedules and the bizarre time differences between Earth and Terazed. Soon, they settled into sending video or text messages to each other in their free time, often on a daily basis. Chakotay got used to carrying a PADD with him that contained their most recent communication and found himself reading and rereading her messages whenever he had a free moment. During the boring moments of the dig, he entertained himself by composing in his head his own detailed replies to her last message and imagining her possible response.

Much to his surprise, their separation seemed to bring them closer. It allowed them to put aside the barriers they had carefully constructed on Voyager and it gave him a much-needed detachment from her psychological treatment. They wrote initially as friends, good friends, who knew and trusted each other implicitly. He reminded himself that his goal was to help her shed the guilt she’d carried for so many years, to be a sounding board and a safe haven for her when she felt overwhelmed and besieged by memories, real or imagined. He hadn’t done this to pursue a relationship, he told himself, and he had no right to feel mistreated because it hadn’t happened.

Very quickly, though, he began to appreciate how deeply their personal relationship on Voyager had been distorted by two unavoidable and irreconcilable facts–the fact that she had been his commanding officer and the fact that they had shared an incredibly passionate attraction toward each other. Now, when he talked to her in this more distant manner, he found himself confessing thoughts and feelings in ways that would never have been possible in person. And he sensed that she was doing the same when she wrote to him, revealing a vulnerability and sensitivity that he had always suspected was hidden behind her “captain’s mask.”

After just ten short weeks, he found that she had come to mean more to him than anyone else he’d ever known. He marveled at her brilliant scientific mind, her solemn need to do the right thing, her gentle affection for her friends and family, her scathing sense of humor, and her iron will and strength of character. If she had fascinated him before, he now found himself obsessed with her and anxious to receive the next message containing her thoughts and words.

He’d fallen in love with her all over again. And that meant that she once again had the power to break his heart.

He stepped out of the hot, midday sun and into the refreshing shade of his tent, the air cooled and humidified by a tiny solar-powered unit that serviced four tents in a unit. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and sat down to remove his shoes, breathing deeply to help cool his body and relax his mood. He wanted to believe that his heart was racing because of the heat and the steep grade of the hill, but he knew better. He was excited about the message, and also afraid of what it might contain.

He’d forgotten that telling someone his deepest fears and thoughts inevitably resulted in the chance that the person might betray his trust or fail to return his affection. He hadn’t realized how much power Kathryn had over him until her messages started coming sporadically a few weeks earlier, until they’d been shorter, less detailed, less revealing, until Kathryn seemed happier, more upbeat than he’d ever seen her before. He wanted her to be happy, was even relieved to see her so much better, but one thought reverberated through his mind–her most recent improvement had had nothing to do with him.

He put on his slippers, poured himself a liberal serving of juice, and sat down at his computer to access the chip, gratified to see that it was a video message for once. The screen filled with her face, but he could see that she was in her house in San Francisco, and reminded himself that the videos were done in San Francisco while the audio-only contacts almost always came from her mother’s house in Indiana. He wondered why.

He froze the screen so he could study her face. She was smiling, relaxed, and happy–all of those qualities shone through the look on her face and the glow in her eyes. The drawn, tired expression and the dark circles under her eyes had disappeared completely since he’d last seen her in person, and she was wearing her hair looser, less controlled, so that it curled on her shoulders and around her face in an alluring manner. She was beautiful, he realized, a classic Irish colleen with flashing blue eyes, porcelain skin, and cinnamon freckles on her nose and shoulders.

He activated the message, and her smile widened as she spoke to him, telling him of her upcoming assignment with Starfleet, passing on a few tidbits of Voyager gossip, speculating on a couple of news items, and, all too soon, bringing the message to an end.

“I wish I could go on,” she explained, looking remorseful, “there’s so much I want to tell you, but I need to beam to Indiana before dark. I have March 20th circled in red on my calendar and am so anxious to see you. I have a surprise for you that I hope you like. I miss you. Do you realize that we’ve never been apart this long before? Please don’t stay a minute longer than you have to. See you on the twentieth.” She gave him the classic Academy left-hand salute and signed off.

Chakotay sat in the cool darkness staring at the blank screen, fighting back his disappointment. What was it in Indiana that was taking so much of her time? Perhaps she was just reconnecting with her mother and their family. Maybe she was escaping the pressure and lure of Starfleet to get some much-needed rest in the quiet countryside. He buried his face in his hands. Maybe she’d met another man.

How had he let this situation go from a simple desire to help a friend to an unrequited love affair? He felt like such a fool, an adolescent fool. He didn’t want to believe that Kathryn would let him down or withdraw from him again as she had done on Voyager. He wanted to believe that she would soon admit that she loved him, that they could finally explore the attraction that had simmered beneath the surface from the first day they met. He shuddered to think how much power she held over him, knowing that she could easily crush him with a thoughtless word or inadvertent gesture. With his anxiety threatening to overwhelm him, Chakotay wondered if he would lose her again, and this time forever?

When Rex Detmer toiled up the hill from the dig an hour later, Chakotay was still sitting at his desk staring at the blank screen. Rex stepped into his partner’s tent and slumped into the hammock chair with a sigh of relief. “Well,” he asked, “was the message from who I thought it was?”

“You mean from Kathryn?” Chakotay said, leaning back in his chair with a groan and rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Yeah, it was from her.”

“That’s great.” Rex studied his friend. He had sensed in Chakotay a rising distress about this woman who seemed so important to his happiness. Chakotay obviously had it bad, and things seemed to be getting worse instead of better. “Hey, I was thinking that we could work straight through the weekend and finish up early next week. In fact,” he leaned forward, picking up the cube calendar by Chakotay’s desk and checking the dates, “I don’t see why you couldn’t leave by the twelfth, if you wanted.”

Chakotay’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “I’d hate to leave you with all the cleanup work, Rex.”

“I’ll get even with you later.” He stood up and stretched. “For one thing, starting tonight you can do all the cooking.”

“You have a deal,” Chakotay replied, his face breaking into a grin as he reached for his shoes. He was already imagining Kathryn’s reaction when he told her he’d be home several days early, already picturing himself arriving in San Francisco and finding her waiting for him, a smile of joyous relief on her face. “How about a big salad, spaghetti, and blueberry cheesecake?”

“That’ll do for starters,” Rex chuckled. Chakotay walked past him toward the tent that housed the kitchen, and Rex took the opportunity to pick up a small frame that held a picture of Kathryn and Chakotay at the recent Voyager reunion. “Don’t break his heart, Kathryn,” he murmured. “Please don’t break his heart.”