For most of his life, Chakotay had observed a strict vegetarian diet. He’d learned only after he arrived that the island provided little beyond the madrone berries in the way of edible plants. His instinct to survive had finally asserted itself over his personal preferences, and he had chosen to take what the Earth did provide without complaint. He took great care when killing any animal to thank it for its sacrifice and to put every bit of its flesh and bone to good use.
Once, the deer of Orcas Island had been all but domesticated by the tourists who flocked to the islands in summer. As the islands had returned to their more natural, wild state in the absence of human habitation in the early part of the twenty-second century, those deer who had forgotten what it was to forage for the necessities had died off, replaced by a sturdier and much craftier strain.
Chakotay had been pleased by the ease with which his body had adjusted to the rigors he now demanded of it. He remembered little of the week following the attack at the Azure Nebula beyond Cambridge’s constant presence. Distant visions of tossing and turning on sweat-soaked sheets between nightmares still plagued him.
Once that had passed, he had emerged from the painful fugue and awakened feeling more himself than he had for some time, though terribly empty. With a heretofore unknown clarity, Chakotay realized that he barely recognized the man he had become. His grief was destroying him. But even this knowledge did nothing immediately to relieve the anger he still felt every time he thought of Kathryn’s death.
He had requested an open-ended leave, which after Voyager’s performance, no one in Starfleet would have dared deny. His only coherent thought at the time was that he must put as much distance as possible between himself and the man who had become Voyager’s captain in the last nine months. That man, the one who had been so devastated by Kathryn’s death, was not who he wanted to be. He walked beside Chakotay now, magnifying every twinge in his stomach and every ache of muscle tissue grown soft through disuse.
Usually, Chakotay managed to ignore him. Today, as the morning cloud cover had given way to a sun-streaked afternoon sky and light drizzle, that man had fallen sullen and silent. Chakotay almost found himself smiling at the man’s inability to find at least a little joy in the simple beauties in which he was now immersed.
Chakotay’s mind had lost track of the days; his body had awakened to a more natural rhythm, rising with first light and resting in its retreat. His senses had been reinvigorated by the plethora of fragrance, visual splendor, and faint rustlings of the natural world. His mind, which had been a whirl of tormented duty for months, was once again a clear and calm space in which he could begin to examine his past and search for the various forks in the road that had led him into darkness.
Despite this—as often as he had tried to walk the path he had begun—the anger would not leave him be. As the demands of his body were both constant and great, Chakotay had found it easier to focus upon them and had done so with vigor, even as his spirit continued to languish untended.
As he gathered wood for his evening fire, breathing easier now with the exertion of hiking over a kilometer from his most recent campsite in a thicket of evergreens, he was startled into stillness by a sharp crack.
Instinct drove him to bend low and slowly drop the few branches he carried while reaching for the short spear he’d lashed to his back. He had carved dozens of sharp heads for it from wood and bone, and depending upon the size of whatever was tracking him, it should prove effective for defensive purposes. Part of him hoped the buck he had been stalking for days might be foraging nearby. Though he still had a week’s worth of dried venison, his stomach rumbled appreciatively at the thought of fresh meat.
The next sound that met his ears simultaneously shattered that hope and his peace. It was more shocking than his dips into the waters off the beach at Massacre Bay every few days.
“Chakotay!”
He recognized the voice at once.
Tom.
Torn between the appropriateness of moving toward the sound and a more subtle desire to evade it, Chakotay remained still. A few moments later, the cry was repeated, closer, and Chakotay could clearly make out Tom’s form traipsing through the woods, followed by a smaller figure with white hair.
Sveta?
At the sight of his old Maquis comrade, Chakotay’s heart began to pound. She was one of his oldest and dearest friends, and wouldn’t have dared disturb his solitude without good cause.
Accepting the inevitable—if Sveta was there, he was as good as found already—Chakotay rose and began to walk toward those who had sought him out.
“His life signs are strong,” Tom was saying.
“Probably because I’m right here,” Chakotay replied, stepping through a pair of young trees.
Tom’s face was instantly alight with relief. Sveta merely eyed him evenly, as was her wont.
“Thank God,” Tom said, dropping his hands to his knees to catch his breath as Sveta stepped past him to offer Chakotay an embrace.
“You look like shit,” were the first words she spoke when they had separated.
“Nice to see you too,” he replied. “What are you doing here?”
“Freezing our asses off,” Tom replied. Though in uniform under a heavy field jacket, his lips were a little blue and the hand he extended to Chakotay was hard and cold as ice.
Chakotay was quite comfortable in the light cotton pants and the layers of shirts beneath a makeshift jacket he had wrought from his first deerskin.
“You should have checked the weather before you transported in,” Chakotay said, suddenly quite cognizant of the graveled edge to his voice. As he hadn’t used it often in the last several weeks, it was a little strange to hear.
“We transported to Obstruction Pass Park,” Tom corrected him. “That’s how many kilometers from here?” he demanded of Sveta.
“Seven, maybe eight,” she said, smirking.
Something in Chakotay liked the fact that she hadn’t made this little trip easy for Tom. Noting the combadge Tom wore, a piece of technology Chakotay had left behind in San Francisco, he said, “Well, transporting out from here shouldn’t be a problem. Just make the call.”
Tom’s face hardened.
“Come on, Chakotay,” he goaded, “haven’t you missed me just a little?”
Chakotay kept his face as neutral as possible. The truth was he hadn’t missed Tom, or any other part of his past life, at all, and this intrusion into the only peace he had felt for what seemed like forever was most unwelcome.
“What do you need, Commander?”
Tom paused, obviously stung.
Finally he replied, “Sveta was good enough to help me track you, since you didn’t happen to tell anyone where you were going. We’ve been at it for almost a week.”
“Then Sveta is obviously getting rusty. Usually she’s much better at finding people who don’t want to be found,” Chakotay deadpanned.
Tom shook his head, obviously frustrated.
“Okay, fine. That’s the way you want to play this, great. I just thought you should know that Starfleet has new orders for Voyager. I don’t have the details yet, but based on the intensity of the preparations and the number of people involved, they’re big. I’d hoped that all this time doing your rubber tree thing might help you find a little clarity, but even if it hasn’t, you need to put whatever demons are driving you someplace dark and quiet and get back to your ship while it’s still yours.”
Chakotay took a moment to shudder under the impact of Tom’s words. More than their subject, the thought of once again being bound by duty and ordered around by an admiralty with the barest shred of a clue chafed.
“Does that complete your report, Commander?” Chakotay asked stonily.
“Yes, sir,” Tom replied coldly.
“I’m sorry, but for now, I can’t accommodate you. My demons and I still have a few things to work out. My presence should not be a factor in determining your level of participation in whatever mission is on
the drawing board.”
Given the damage Voyager had sustained and what had to be the seriously depleted reserves of Starfleet’s materials and personnel, he doubted that whatever mission they were contemplating would become a reality for at least another couple of months.
Tom raised his hand to tap his combadge as Sveta stepped toward Chakotay, causing Tom to pause.
“Who are you?” she demanded fiercely.
“Sveta…”
“Don’t even try,” she warned. “I thought you came here to bury your past, not wallow in it. The ancient Lumni people have a spot just over that hill for the sanctified dead. As long as you’re not interested in living anymore, it would be easy enough to lie down and join them.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t have to. I only have to know who you were to see that who you are now does no justice to him, or those who once loved him. You’re not even worthy of my pity anymore.”
With that, she turned abruptly and hurried past Tom into the dense woodlands. Chakotay watched a moment of panic flicker across Tom’s face, followed by acceptance that even alone, she was better equipped to handle their surroundings than he would ever be.
“Will you at least do one thing for me?” Tom asked.
“What?”
Tom reached into a pocket in his jacket and pulled out a combadge. “Catch,” he said, tossing it toward Chakotay, who caught it instantly.
“I left mine at home for a reason,” Chakotay said.
“I don’t care,” Tom replied. “The time may come when you feel differently, and I don’t have another week to spend hunting you down.”
Chakotay nodded slightly and placed the badge in the small leather pack he carried around his waist. As Tom turned to follow Sveta, Chakotay called after him.
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
Tom stopped but did not turn around.
“I’m just not ready yet,” Chakotay said to Tom’s back.
“Then I suggest you hurry up and get ready,” Tom replied. Without a backward glance, he disappeared into the forest.
As soon as he had lost sight of them, Chakotay returned to gathering his firewood. A lazy creek trickled through the brush a few meters away and Chakotay directed his steps toward it, pausing to run his hands through the icy current before leaning over to splash a little into his mouth.
He was taken aback by his reflection. He’d already grown accustomed to the rough beard that covered his jawline but hadn’t realized how, in combination with his unruly mane, it gave him the appearance of what his mother would have called a shantlor.
Wild man.
The other version of himself seemed to have awakened from his stupor and now sat beside Chakotay, his face clean shaven and his proud tattoo unsullied by days of dirt and grime.
They don’t understand, the other assured him.
No, Chakotay agreed. They don’t.
The rage again began to bubble up inside, turning his stomach to a mass of writhing snakes. For an instant, another face appeared before him, blotting out his own.
Her hair was pulled back, but a few loose wisps betrayed her tension and stress. Her eyes were grimly set, though she did her best to hide her obvious fears.
“Can’t you at least tell me where you’re going?” Chakotay found himself thinking.
“It’s classified. Believe me, I’m not looking forward to it, but it’s something I have to do. More important lives than mine are at stake. Do you understand?” she pleaded.
“You know it scares the hell out of me when you talk that way, Kathryn.”
“The only thing you should fear right now is my wrath if you don’t show up in Venice in three weeks.”
Chakotay sat back on his heels, willing her face to disappear. He could feel the cold and gleeful joy of the man beside him and could sense the strength he continued to draw from Chakotay’s pain.
It was no longer just Kathryn’s death on which he fed. Spectral shadows closed in upon him: Tare, Kaz, Beekman, Hillhurst, T’Reni, Curtis, Campbell…
The list of those who had died on his watch grew longer every day he served with Starfleet.
He had spent more than six weeks convincing himself that he was, no matter what Sveta thought, learning to live again in the world, rediscovering who he was and what he was meant to do.
The other man began to laugh, and Chakotay felt the flesh at the back of his neck begin to tingle and rise.
Suddenly he knew that whatever this was, it wasn’t life. The thought made him tremble with fear.
Paris stormed into his temporary quarters in San Francisco and threw himself down onto the low sofa in the apartment’s small living room. He’d left Chakotay over an hour ago and still had no feeling in his hands or feet.
Frankly, he preferred it to the parts of his body he could still feel, as they were a riot of frustration.
“Computer, increase room temperature by five degrees,” he ordered.
With a sonorous chirp the computer complied.
I should have told him.
This thought had been torturing Tom since he’d felt the transporter free him from Chakotay’s icy domain.
“Damn it all, I should have told him,” Tom said aloud to the empty room.
Tom hadn’t actually spent much time in the apartment since he’d been called to a meeting at Project Full Circle six weeks ago with Admirals Montgomery and Batiste, Captain Eden, and a handful of other officers he now knew much better than he cared to. The quarters were similar to the temporary housing Starfleet had provided to all of Voyager’s crew when they first returned to Earth. Tom refused to allow himself to remember the hours he’d spent in that first suite imagining the life he and B’Elanna were going to build there with Miral. This time around, he hadn’t made the mistake of beginning to personalize any of the space, apart from a few pictures of his wife and child that sat on the small dresser by his bed.
That meeting had been enough to make Tom seriously question how soon he would be ending his career. Voyager and a fleet of eight other vessels were being fitted with slipstream drives and sent back to the Delta quadrant. Only after the mission’s objectives had been clearly enunciated by the admirals had Tom actually seen the wisdom in Starfleet’s plan and how nicely the objectives would dovetail with his and B’Elanna’s. And much as he hated to see so many of his old friends tossed back into the wilds of the galaxy, part of him understood that Voyager’s crew was being given a mission of the caliber and importance they deserved, and were best qualified to fulfill.
And at least this time we know it’s not a one-way trip.
Captain Eden had assured Paris privately that Chakotay was still Voyager’s commanding officer under fleet commander Admiral Batiste. Every officer in the room had been advised that until the crew briefing, still several weeks away, the mission specifics were considered classified and no one was at liberty to speak of them with anyone outside the room.
Tom hadn’t counted on Chakotay’s hostile reception. Part of him had honestly believed that after all this time he would find his commanding officer restored to health and sanity. Had that been the case, Tom would have shared the whole truth about the mission with Chakotay. The man whose wisdom and compassion he had come to respect and rely upon so thoroughly in the Delta quadrant and in the years that followed would have never revealed to anyone that Tom had broken his oath with the admirals.
But Chakotay hadn’t been kidding when he said he wasn’t ready. Tom had sensed that the moment he’d first laid eyes on him. Even Sveta, who had known and loved Chakotay longer than any of Voyager’s crew, had confided to Tom that Chakotay might never be ready to resume his former life.
“What happened?” Tom demanded of the silence around him.
He and Harry had dissected Chakotay’s behavior for months, and neither of them had ever come to a satisfactory conclusion as to what exactly had pushed their captain so far over the edge.
Clearly it was connected to Admiral Janeway. B
ut all of them had lost friends and loved ones before, during and after the Delta quadrant. No one but Chakotay had allowed such losses to cripple him so thoroughly.
Tom knew that the only thing that might have pushed him that far would have been the death of B’Elanna or Miral. He had flirted with that fate two years earlier and in the darkest of those days knew he had almost lost himself completely.
But Chakotay and the admiral were just fellow officers. They were close, but they weren’t…
A memory brushed past Tom’s mind so quickly he actually had to stop breathing to coax it into returning. When it finally did, Tom felt a heaviness descending upon his chest even as a shot of adrenaline burst through his stomach.
But that was years ago…
Over five years earlier, Chakotay had spent a few days wound tighter than a Vulcan logic thread, and Tom had finally confronted him about his odd behavior. Chakotay had reluctantly admitted that it had to do with a woman. At the time Tom couldn’t imagine who he was talking about. He had accidentally learned the truth when he’d loaned Chakotay some of his holodeck time and seen him entering his Venice simulation with Admiral Janeway.
Nothing had come of it, as best Tom could tell, and compassion for his friend had forced him to file it away in the least traveled portions of his mind along with a promise he had made to Chakotay that their conversation would remain between the two of them.
But Chakotay and Janeway had been in regular contact and met frequently in the years since Voyager’s return, and who was to say that at some point…
Oh, no. Please tell me you didn’t.
Like a puzzle piece you thought you’d lost and suddenly discovered under a sofa, Tom saw the action and its consequences and for the first time, a complete and perfectly horrible picture.
It was the only thing that could account for Chakotay’s behavior.
“Why didn’t you say something, you idiot!” Tom shouted, rising to throw off his heavy coat, which was, at long last, now stifling in the tropical heat he had ordered for his quarters.
Star Trek: Voyager®: Full Circle Page 35
