Pairing: J/C
Rated: M
Summary: Episode addition to 'Memorial'
Disclaimer: Paramount/Viacom own the series and the characters that are related to Star Trek: Voyager, but the story is mine.
Length: 2,600 words
Date: February 2000

 

It had been the toughest three weeks of her life; for her, and for most of the people she cared about. She had sent her away team in search of Dilithium, and it had been a success. But there had been some consequences of her sending that away team. She had lost so much in that week, and gained so much more. She had finally found two things she had lost a long time ago, and had now finally re-established in her life. Pride about who she was and love.

She said this, as she watched the man next to her sleeping peacefully. She picked up the padd from her bedside table and began to catalogue the events of the last few weeks.

This was not an official log, just a memory.

*~*~*~*~*

Three weeks ago...

I looked at the viewscreen in astrometrics. I had seen this planet before; I knew this place. "Tarakas...." I see the images of planets and people I didn't know and strangers I couldn't name. Yet I felt closer to these strangers invading my dreams than I had felt to most of the people in my life today. And the blood, and the bodies...

I run up to the man that I would later learn to call Savtra. "What the hell are you doing?" I shove him back with a strength I didn't think I possessed. He hollers out commands, but I don't listen. I won't listen. He yells something, telling me to get out of the way to stand aside. I hold my own. "They're already dead."

He looks at me smugly. "They were never here. We disabled their shield generators, entered the colony and they were gone."

I'm getting hysterical. "No one's going to believe that." But deep down I know that just like the politicians of today and of days gone by, they can hide things if they want to. They can deny whatever they like, and the winners write the history books.

"I won't lie about what happened here." I won't compromise my principles, my almighty principles, I never would and I never will. Not even here in a life that is not my own. But then again, when is my life really my own?

"They you say nothing."

My mouth opens and I gape at him, wondering how anyone can be that insensitive towards anything. "We murdered these people."

"In self defence."

"If that were true you wouldn't be vaporising the evidence." I can't stand it anymore. I turn around and yell to anyone who will listen. "You don't have to listen to him. We've got to let people know, we panicked...they'll understand."

"No they won't." He is so adamant, as if he is more sure of this than he is of anything in his life; I know we can't let the carnage continue. The mistakes we make today if we don't learn from them, we are doomed to repeat. "Move away."

I raise my gun, in self-defence? When I think about it, I think it was more to defend the dead, they didn't deserve to die like this and I have to save them...I have to save their memories. No one has the right to steal that from them.

"Move away." He yells again. I back off, not able to do anything. I am a coward, I watch as he continues to vaporise the bodies of the poor, the meek and the helpless.

*~*~*~*~*

As much as I hate to admit it, when I look back upon this tragedy, it was between Seven and Neelix that I most understood what had gone on here. I remembered his and Seven's conversation. I had stayed in the background, sure to avoid interrupting them. Seven sometimes surprises me, and this is one of those times.

I hear Neelix speak, sounding afraid almost of his own voice. "Seven. When you were a Borg...you were involvedin some unpleasant activities." Seven in her normal stoic manner, answered Neelix's questions. "I helped to assimilate millions."

"I don't mean to sound insensitive, but do you ever feel shame about what you did?"

"Frequently."

When I heard Seven admit this to Neelix of all people, I was shocked. This woman-child who had so come into and warmed everyone's hearts, despite her brash manner, was more complicated and more sensitive than any of us gave her credit for. I kept my comments to myself, listening to the remainder of the conversation.

Neelix answered her response, with something else I didn't expect to hear. My fearless Talaxian tour guide was afraid and traumatised. "How do you manage to keep going? Knowing you've done such horrible things?"

"I have no choice."

Neelix, doing an imitation of Seven. I almost expected him to laugh, but this was nothing to laugh about, and he had at some point that evening, lost the laughter in his eyes. "Guilt is irrelevant."

Seven tried to make him understand. But I knew, he understood better than anyone. "On the contrary, my feelings of remorse help me to remember what I did and prevent me from taking similar actions in the future. Guilt can be a difficult but useful emotion."

"It's certainly difficult."

I wanted to reach out and touch them all. I wanted to comfort them and make them feel all right. But I couldn't even make myself feel all right, how was I supposed to do it for anyone else?

*~*~*~*~*

I was beamed down to the planet along with Chakotay and a few others. We walked the planet's surface, hoping to find an answer. As a scientist that's what I was always in search of, as a woman I never found them.

Then I saw it. I broke into a run speeding across the open field. A massive obelisk, a huge carving made of stone, or so it appeared. Chakotay at my side, I touched the surface of this marvel hoping to feel the pain again...but nothing. I never did.

Through the years I had learned to block all feeling, all emotion and here I stood begging for it to return. I finally relented and uttered the only words I could think of. "I think we found our war." Not very poetic I know, but it's what came to me.

Despite the neutrality and the avoidance of the topic, here in this moment...this memorial represented the memory of every creature I had killed. Every person I had murdered as a stepping stone in my career. All the friends and family members who had suffered, and the enemies as well.

Cardassians, Klingons, Hirogen, Borg...all the species, the names were a blur for half the time to me these were nameless faces, but I was sure they were millions, trillions...okay maybe a few dozen, but it didn't matter. I was hypocritical. For someone who held life in such a high regard, murder when called for, for me wasn't as hard as it should be.

I was a murderer; I had been since the day I was crowned, since the day that young naive girl I had been, became the soldier I now was.

*~*~*~*~*

Back on the ship, we were talking. Justifying, that's all it really was. As Seven went through the motions with Chakotay...trying to analyse, trying to explain...I realised. For them it was their dreams and perhaps their nightmares, for me it was my life.

The translation matrix picked out the words adorning the object one by one. A Warning to anyone at all, what we were all capable of. What we could all do, as I think and find myself - in so many ways - more susceptible than anyone to the siren's song.

Chakotay read them with a passion I knew he possessed but rarely showed in public.

WORDS ALONE CANNOT CONVEY THE SUFFERING
WORDS ALONE CANNOT PREVENT WHAT HAPPENED HERE FROM HAPPENING AGAIN
BEYOND WORDS LIES EXPERIENCE
BEYONE EXPERIENCE LIES TRUTH
MAKE THIS TRUTH YOUR OWN

Realisation dawned on me at that point and I piped up. "It's a memorial." The awe in my voice was no doubt heard by all around me. This was something that I had never been subject to before. I looked at Chakotay. "We weren't victims of a conspiracy, we were witnesses to a massacre."

It ended in a thoughtful silence, and that was the end of it until the briefing.

*~*~*~*~*

In the briefing room the silence was deafening, until finally Chakotay began to speak. He spoke of the crew being traumatised about the massacre. I hardly flinched when he called me by my given name in front of the others. At this point, it wasn't important.

*Shut it down, we have to shut it down.* Chakotay's words repeating in my head like a mantra. *We don't have the right.* My perceptions slowly taking hold.

I spoke of transmitting it in sequence, of why it was fragmented...the message that is, and then came Chakotay's hard, crass words that cut through me like a hot knife through a cold pad of butter, a knife sharpened to murderous perfection. *We don't have the right.* My mind screamed out, but my mouth would not utter the words.

*~*~*~*~*

That was when the doctor entered. He would be the voice of reason; he would help me out. He spoke of us remembering the massacre forever. Those memories were now a part of us, memories of a crime we didn't commit, yet we were forced to remember. Experiences of a time before we were even born. It wasn't our tragedy, these weren't our memories...we didn't have the right.

I listened as everyone spoke of rights. Neelix's answer to the puzzle, 'do we have the right to destroy?' Harry's contribution was next, young and innocent Harry. A child always to me, a son I never carried, but protected through all...did they have the right to inflict this on us? Finally Chakotay, my best friend, my one...why? Such a simple word why, it was the sentence that came after it that was the punch. Why should others have to endure this as we did, as they did? Shut it down. End of story, end of his compassionate life as an Angry Warrior who had found peace.

Then Neelix again, the best words of wisdom anyone could give me spoken, "Because that's how we learn never to make the same mistake again." A rebuttal to the commander's outspoken question.

Then finally Tuvok spoke; my confidant, my brace...and he spoke to me of logic of all things, he brought up the topic of logic. Then finally Neelix again and my mind is made up.

"This isn't about 'logic', it's about remembering..." All the voices in my head, all the opinions...all the excuses.

And then the words I say aloud, and the whole room goes silent, giving me the respect I have earned from them over the past six long years.

"Beyond words lies experience
Beyond experience lies truth
Make this truth your own"

I look into the eyes of each senior staff member present. "They made this decision for us 300 years ago. I won't destroy their memory."

I needed to say something they could all relate to. I needed to make them see, it wasn't only about us, but about the universe and about unfortunate universal invariances like war and hate; And later it was about the good ones like pride and love and friendship.

"Not this," I stood by once before and did nothing, not again." I tried to make them see, by the pain in my eyes. I had watched those people get vaporised once before, I would not let history repeat itself. "The Obelisk at Kitimer, the fields at Gettisberg. Those were other people's memories too, but we don't honour them any less." I tried one last time to explain, but none understood, then I looked at Neelix and I knew. He had lived through a massacre, a bloody massacre on Rinax. He knew. I could see the truth in his eyes.

"We're not going to shut down the transmitter is that clear?" I knew no one listened and no one understood, not like I did and even I didn't know everything. "Is that clear." I say it in a low commanding voice I knew they would listen to.

I made them fix it; I made them try to repair my guilty conscious. When we got back to the ship and things got back underway Neelix visited my Ready Room. He walked in looking as if someone had given him the most precious and thoughtful gift in the world. He said two words which touched me, but which I'm not all that sure I deserved: "Thank you." He walked out and I realised someone had given him a gift, they had returned his memories and given him back a little piece of himself that he had perhaps thought lost.

After my shift ended that day, I walked to Chakotay's quarters and rang the chime, I almost lost my guts, but my hands made their way to his door-chime before I had a chance to stop them. He answered the door.

"Kathryn." It was a statement of greeting, nothing more, nothing less. I saw none of the hatred or disobedience I had assumed would be there when he answered the door. Instead I found in my XO's eyes a strange sense of understanding.

"Chakotay..."

He reached up for me and placed a finger to my lips. He looked deep into my eyes, he wanted to make sure, make absolutely sure. In my eyes he saw no doubt, I made sure of that. He pulled me to him in an embrace of friendship, he was sure that would never change.

"Chakotay, I love you, I think I always have. I just didn't know how to tell you." I remember looking at him, I remember thinking how lucky I was. I remember wondering if he would still be there in the morning, if he would still love me too. I remember a lot of things. I remember that night, the lovemaking of two people deprived for far too long.

That night we escaped to my quarters. One of the advantages of being Captain is my quarters are bigger...and for that matter so is my bed. We made love in that bed, sort of christening it. Every time I go on a deep space mission I christen my bed, kind of a good luck tradition. The day I left Earth though, Mark was...indisposed, and so my tradition hit a snag. I didn't have the heart to have Kashyk in my bed, and when I really get down to it...this is the first man I've had in my quarters since...hell it's the first man I'VE HAD since I left Earth, and I'm glad I held out for him.

Life's worth waiting for and so is love...and as my tradition continued...me doing the thing in my bed with a man I love, my good luck has continued.

Thing is...this journal, is my memorial. A memorial of memories of good times, because just as I said earlier...the good comes with the bad, and every day I live I thank god for the bad, because the bad brought the good, and the massacre brought Chakotay to me.

BEYOND EXPERIENCE LIES TRUTH
MAKE THIS TRUTH YOUR OWN

THE END