The Chain
By: AW
Pairing J/C
Rated: T
Summary: This how the chain of their life started, and this is how it ended
Disclaimer: Paramount/Viacom owns the rights to the characters, but the story is mine.
Date: November 2000
Chapter One
Listen to the wind blow
Watch the sun rise
Run in the shadows
Damn your love
Damn your lies
And it
You don’t love me
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain
Listen to the wind
Down comes the
Run in the shadows
Damn your love
Damn your lies
Break the silence
Damn the dark
Damn the light
And if
You don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would neve
Never break the chain….
New mission. Every time she started a new mission she got the butterflies. They never went away, which in all honesty…was good.
Kathryn figured the moment she didn’t get excited, the moment the fear of rejection and of not being right disappeared, that was the day, the hour, the moment she would need to resign her commission.
For the moment the spectacular became commonplace, was the moment she would lose sight of who she was and where she needed to be, to be alive. Kathryn sucked in the final breaths of Indiana’s air before she departed Mark’s company and left to meet her new ship and crew.
Voyager…
Little did she know all those years ago when she had first met Voyager, that this was going to be the last ship of her career. That this ship would very likely form most of the links to the chain that was and would be her life. Little did she know that this ship would not only be one link in the chain but rather two, then three and finally the completion if this chain that was her life, her love and her dreams. Dreams she was as yet unaware existed.
Kathryn Janeway had set foot on Voyager and her life had finally begun. All the years of preparation she had had all leading up to this moment when she would discover what it truly meant to live and to love.
Flashbacks to moments in her life in the chain that made her life worth living. *At ease before you sprain something.* The first encounter with one of her cherished crew, her family. Harry. Like the son that at the time she had never thought she would have. Of course today looking at her daughters, she knew those thoughts of a desolate and lonely life had been misguided.
Over the years, Harry had been changed, transformed really, from the young green ensign he had been to the man he now was. The man who had shown her that love was not an impossibility with his forbidden allegiance with Tal, to the man who had ended up delivering her second child into the world.
Harry, her cherished little man, who had grown into so much more. Now he was a close and special friend as well as a respected lieutenant-commander. *Harry, thank you so much* and so a link was formed and the chain was strengthened.
As Kathryn remembered her meetings with all of her current as well as her perished crew she looked back at the relationships which had been formed. She remembered the love and the laughs of all of her crew, for today she would finally say goodbye to her most precious crewmember, the love of her life, the yin to her yang and the father of her children.
The tears began as she remembered the long and winding road they had taken to get to their final destination, lovers of the world.
“The Caretaker Incident” as the crew had begun referring to those first fateful days all those years ago which had brought them all together as a family.
Her feisty Klingon engineer; then a misfit with nowhere to go and no one to love. *Who is she to be making these decisions for all of us?* B’Elanna, the daughter she would later raise, but at that moment saw as an impossibility. *You're as dedicated to your Starfleet protocols as she was to her Klingon rituals.* And interesting comparison and one Kathryn would later realize was a compliment and a showing of immense respect and gratitude.
Kathryn remembered how she and B’Elanna had gone from Starfleet Captain and loathing Maquis misfit to Captain and respected Chief Engineer to friends brought together by fate and circumstance and the love of a man named Chakotay.
*Chakotay, my beloved Chakotay. How could you leave me like this? A widow raising two daughters, a widow and a Starship Captain.* Every day she lived without him she thanked the gods for the bonds she had formed throughout the years. The loves she had seen and lost. The lives she had seen created and destroyed. The ones who had persisted in her endless and selfish pursuit of home and the truth.
The thing she refused to let herself see until it was too late for many was that the chain had been forged and hardened over time and by circumstance and love.
And home…it had been found in a lonely and seemingly sterile ship named ‘Voyager’.
Tom had always seen the best in everything, or possibly it had been that Voyager had been so much better than anything he had had on Earth. Here he was respected, he was given a position of merit and he had found love. Kathryn had always hoped for those things for all of her crew, and most of them had found it aboard Voyager in one form or another.
When Tom had first come aboard Voyager he had an extreme hatred for Chakotay. Kathryn could have sworn they lived to antagonize each other. In reality, she later realized these feelings of antagonism were born from respect and to a certain respect envy of each other’s abilities.
Kathryn had at one point had somewhat of a schoolgirl crush on Tom Paris. She would never admit this to anyone of course. To her it was more a sexual attraction than anything else. Under different circumstances perhaps, but here, on this ship, where he had eyes for only her Klingon Chief Engineer, it would not happen…she would not let it happen.
Later she would of course realize the depth of his feelings for her more in a sisterly way than anything else, and the deep trust that she would forge in her relationship with her helmsman.
This relationship although precious and special to her was so unlike the bond she shared with Chakotay: there was never any competition in her eyes. Or she suspected anyone else’s. They each filled an important place in her life, but they were such different roles that they were not comparable, nor were they competition for the other.
Oh yes, it was a beautiful life Kathryn Janeway lived. A life where friendships and loves all melded into a life of well-being and a chain forged from those relationships and the depths of these feelings.
A family together forever, formed through love and life experience.
Experience. When she thought of this word one face came to the forefront of her mind. Tuvok. Tuvok her oldest friend and confidant. Taking on a father figure and role in her life despite the reversal of their positions in work. Perhaps that’s why it worked, a parents greatest treasure to have the child surpass them.
It was true however, even the Captain needed someone to look up to and lean on from time to time. Tuvok filled this void for her, and left by her father many years ago.
Oh yes. He has been the one who had been there when she had finally admitted her feelings for Chakotay. The one she had asked to walk her down the aisle when she had asked for her ‘Angry Warrior’s’ hand in marriage. The first one she had told and confided in when she had found herself unexpectedly pregnant after not more than a year of marriage to her love.
Finally he had held her as she cried when she had heard of Chakotay’s accident and imminent death. Too soon a candle blown out by the winds of time.
Chakotay.
The day her love died she had felt his presence coming to her in sleep, in waking moments, in all moments. Assuring her it would be okay and that Kathryn would see him again some day, but that now…it was the children that needed her more than Kathryn needed him.
Kes had come to her in her dreams a whisper of a life assuring her in death as she had in life of all that was good and right. Her beloved and dear friend Kes had meant so much to her. Like Harry, Kes had come to her young and innocent. As the innocence disappeared, the look in her eyes was replaced by one of wisdom and knowledge beyond her years.
So many people lost over the years, and so many lives created. Love always carried one true price: one day you had to lose. One day you had to disband from those who had shared those feelings with you. One day the chain forged over time and experience would separate out of necessity.
Of course when Kes left them another had taken her place, the most prominent and arrogant being, Seven. ‘Seven of Nine, Tertiary adjunct of unimatrix zero-one’. Such a long name at the time no doubt meaning something to the Borg, and to her. Now it was nothing more than a memory of a woman taken away too soon. Three years after her separation from the collective, Seven’s cortical node had ceased functioning, Kathryn remembered. *If I’m having trouble accepting your condition its because I don’t want to lose a friend.* A tear tumbled down Kathryn’s cheek, then another. She remembered the sad and lost look on the woman-child’s face. And then it had ended. Voyager was never the same, and from that day on, the casualties continued.
Yes, getting home had cost them all dearly, but Captain Janeway had brought her crew home, brought them back to the Alpha Quadrant.
Kathryn felt a tiny hand brush the tear away from her cheeks. “Don’t cry mommy. Don’t be sad…please.”
Kathryn laughed. Little Melissa Janeway had come to console her. Both children seemed to have inherited their father’s spiritual and soft side. Yes they were their father’s children. Although, Natalia was more like her than her older sister, she could see it in these children, her reason for living.
Of course, life had not always been like this, and there had been many tumbles and mistakes along the way, but they had all been events that had forged this chain that was her life, that was her love, that was their future.
CHAPTER 2
END CHAPTER 1
TBC IN CHAPTER 2