Chakotay’s voice sounds garbled through the link. Probably because of the snow and icy winds. Sensors are tracking them – the whole planet is one huge M-Class blizzard.
What am I doing here?
I know what my part is in this. Truth to tell, I almost love Chakotay too much not to let him do this. He’s in so much pain from the loss of his friends…it’s worth losing him, if it’ll make him happy again.
Hopefully.
That old Vulcan proverb isn’t very true…that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Or the one.
I’m sure Chakotay believes down to his very core that he’s doing this for them, because they didn’t deserve to die this way. They deserved more than him to reach home; more than the Maquis traitor they’d set out to capture.
Sitting behind me is the one. The one that causes me more than a little concern. It helps somewhat to know that I’m not the only one that thinks that way.
Her name is Sara. There’s no easy way to explain that woman. One can’t tell she’s in her early thirties, she looks no more than 20 – she’s no more than 5 feet tall. If she sits still enough, she looks like an old china doll – can’t even tell she’s breathing. Chakotay can still pick her up in his arms, woman that she is. I suppose it unnerves me to know that while she doesn’t speak with her mouth, she can with her mind. To know that someone is in my head without my knowledge isn’t a subject I take lightly. But Sara’s as different as her telepathy, it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with her. If she can sense what I’m thinking, she knows I care about her just as much as Chakotay and Harry do.
She’s actually quite intelligent. Her IQ can’t be measured, and her slim fingers fly over a console so quickly I can’t even begin to track the calculations she makes. Erect in her chair, dressed in black upon black upon black, trousers, boots and shirt, white-pale face and long, dark walnut hair thick in its single braid down her back, strands of gray even at her age starting to invade her temples, she was Harry’s primary guide in determining what exactly went wrong on that day. Starfleet awarded her a commission – like Harry, she resigned it. The only difference came when they wanted to take her apart piece by piece and figure out what made her a telepath. Or was it when they almost had her committed because she wouldn’t talk to them…hard to remember exactly.
If I didn’t know any better, and I think I do, I’d think Chakotay was doing this just as much for her as he is for the others, as well as himself. Chakotay said at one time she talked, as normally as other people do, but she doesn’t now, at least I’ve never heard her.
He says the day Voyager died she died with everyone else.
And I believe it.
Sara’s eyes are unlike any other that I’ve ever seen. They’re so hauntingly beautiful that one could almost get lost in them. Unfortunately the operative word is haunting, not beautiful – the deep-set azure-cobalt-cerulean blue isn’t backlit and flecked with silver as Chakotay said it once was. They’re as dead as she is, inside.
They’re a package deal. That’s what Chakotay told me when I first met him all those years ago. She left him once, to retain her commission, but when it all went wrong – just the last straw of many other things – she found him again. Ran straight into his arms and never left them, really. Oh there’s enough room there for both of us, but this isn’t a competition. I’m Chakotay’s lover; his relationship with her runs more along the lines of a father and his child, and even that isn’t the correct way to describe it. The closest, maybe, but not the precise way. He’s told me before that he’s more of a father to her than hers ever was. For some reason I never pressed for details on that story…if the scars I’ve seen on her are any indication, I don’t want to know.
Even so, it’s mostly Harry that takes care of her now, though Chakotay doesn’t slack off in that department. They both check on her throughout the night, both make sure she eats and sleeps and doesn’t do anything stupid, though if Sara’s capable of that even underneath every layer that forms her it would be news to me.
She cares about me. I know it, she knows I know it. That’s enough, it would seem. I’ve taken care of her before; on various occasions we’ve sat together for an hour or more. I talk, she lisens. It’s rather frustrating at times, to have one-sided conversations with a person that only sits and stares at you.
And to think that I’d finally gotten used to it, just in time to give it up – if this works.
Harry’s brought the EMH from Voyager on board the Delta Flyer. I’ve never seen Sara move so fast; she’s in the back compartment before I can stop her. From the compartment I can hear the voice of the EMH begging her to let go of him – no doubt she has him in one of the bear hugs that Chakotay gives her nowadays, more frequently as the years have come and gone.
They’re tracking us, we need to get a move on if we’re going to get this show on the road – or off the road – what do you call it when you’re about to alter time? I can’t seem to think of any old axioms that work for this one. At any rate, there’s nothing that can be said or done.
My turn to visit the planet.
Sara’s eyes are bloodshot, making the azure on them even more oustanding and haunted, I can see that immediately upon entering the back compartment, but there’s a semi-sparkle in them that makes me stop and stare. Chakotay has his hands on her shoulders. Harry’s explaining to the EMH that Sara hasn’t said a word in over 10 years. Since the doctor is a hologram, I wonder what she’ll do now?
Chakotay and I head to the surface. He’s sad, and quiet, this man I’m joined at the hip with. I know in my heart that while I love him, his heart doesn’t feel the same – probably because it’s here, it’s always been here, for 15 years its been buried under an icy planet with 148 other people. His command codes – it must’ve broken his heart to use them for this purpose – link us to the systems we need. Now it’s up to them, up in that flyer.
Chakotay tells me he’s having last-minute jitters, that he knows he’ll lose me if this succeeds. I tell him that he picked a great time to tell me. I tell him what I’ve known all along; he’s always been there, on that icy planet with them. All right, I’ll admit I want to cry, but I don’t. I have to be strong, for him. For them.
From behind us we hear someone coming, and I stare in shock to see Sara dressed in thermal gear coming through the door, her little feet padding quietly. Chakotay isn’t happy to see her.
“I told you not to come down here!” he yells.
No response from Sara. Innocently she wanders around like a little girl let onto a full-size, if frozen replica of a starship. I see her swallow hard and it’s hard not to reach out and pat her on the shoulder, to make some sort of a gesture towards her to let her know I really do understand that she hurts.
To think that she’s survived for this.
She has, in a way. The same as Harry and Chakotay. Chakotay commented once that it was lucky Sara was with them; she helped Harry make the calculations that would return everything to normal, at least in their timeline.
In their timeline, he said, she was a beautiful and wonderful girl, not that she isn’t now, but she was a person then, not just an empty shell with but one reason to survive.
She wanders around and kneels to look at the body of Captain Janeway. Chakotay tells her not to cry, the tears will freeze on her face and she’ll be in serious trouble. His attempt at making a joke, if a bad one, to ease the tension we feel at being in such a place. It’s almost like hallowed ground, this mass frozen grave.
I hear a sound from the other side of the deck, and realize that Sara exhaled just a little too sharply, the steam rising from her mouth like clouds. Chakotay is staring at her. He always stares at her, though he doesn’t realize he’s doing it and in fact yells at people to treat her as normally as they would anyone else. Of course it’s not like he has to tell many people – we’ve all been criminals for some time now.
“I can’t find B’Elanna.”
I’m about to reply to Chakotay when I realize he didn’t say it. Chakotay’s about to reply to me when he realizes that I didn’t either. We turn to find Sara staring at us, her face a smooth mask.
She could have been frozen here as well, she’s so pale.
I know she wishes she had.
“What did you say?” Chakotay is in shock. He’s become used to hearing her voice in his head sometimes, so he tells me, he’s almost become used to the memory of what she was, once, being in his head as well. But that can’t prepare him for this.
“Is she down there?” Sara asks with the innocence of a child, pointing towards the deck. Chakotay and I both know what she’s talking about – during the crash, there was a massive compacture of the hull – decks nine through fifteen apparently became deck 10 in one fell swoop.
To be honest, I can’t see her either, this Klingon-human woman that Chakotay has said one or two words about over the years.
“Yes.” He tells her calmly, with the gentleness of a parent telling their child they’ve lost the family pet. He squats on one knee to look at her. “Yes. B’Elanna’s down there.”
Sara’s eyes dart around, moving to take in the entire scene. “They’re all together aren’t they.”
“Yes.” Chakotay’s still quiet, still down on one knee. “Do you miss them, Sara? Do you miss B’Elanna?”
Dumb question. If they handed out awards that would take the cake.
She didn’t have to answer. The numb look cascaded over her features again, and once, just once, I saw those beautiful eyes of hers flicker, as though something was behind them begging to be released from a prison.
“She’s the reason you have to do this.” I whisper to him, absurd as it was trying to keep things from a telepath. “If not for yourself, for her.”
“I know.” The lines in his face deepen. He goes over to Sara, puts a reassuring hand on one small shoulder. “It’ll be all right Sara.” As her blue eyes regard him, for the first time since I’ve known her showing some sign of life, he repeats it. “It’ll be all right.”
Harry’s signaling us; we have to get back to the Flyer. Chakotay picks up the tricorder and we’re back on board a warmer environment, for which I am grateful.
“They’re hailing,” I tell Chakotay, the starship Challenger looming off of our port bow like some giant eagle about to swoop down on a rodent. “Do you want to talk to them?”
“Might buy us some time,” he agrees. Sara doesn’t look as if she cares one way or another. I open the channel.
"Commander," the face of Captain Geordi La Forge, a legend in the world of Starfleet much as we are in the world of criminals, comes to the small viewport. "I've come with an offer. Drop your shields and transport aboard, and the charges of conspiracy will be dropped."
"That's not much of an offer," I pipe up now, unable to contend with Starfleet's definitions of negotiation and rationalism. "Considering that if we succeed, those charges will never have existed in the first place."
"Commander, I feel for your loss," La Forge goes on. "But I have 15 years to think about here. I can't let you do this."
“Like hell you can't,” Sara spits out through clenched teeth. On the screen Captain LaForge looks rather startled.
“So you do talk,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m impressed.”
Sara doesn’t say what she’s thinking, but you don’t have to be an empath to read her face. The expression of go to hell is written on it as plainly as if it were a padd.
“Commander, you know I have to try to stop you.”
“I understand,” Chakotay was always a gentle man. His voice never rises, it takes on the tone of one facing a formidable adversary and accepting the challenge as part of his fate.
La Forge looks down for a moment. There's a flash across his face, as if he wishes he didn't have to do this, as if he could just order his crew to warp speed and slip away silently into the heavens, letting us succeed.
Letting us turn back time.
"Good luck, Captain," Chakotay's quiet voice breaks through the silence.
"To you as well, Commander." La Forge shuts off the channel.
We almost made it. Almost. Somehow, for some reason, the calculations were off -- we couldn't know how, would never know how. As I overheard Harry yell at the holographic doctor, they took ten years to make -- two minutes wasn't going to change them.
There’s a warp core overload – it’ll breach in less than a minute. We can’t eject the core, the controls are all offline. I can hear the dim sounds of the EMH yelling at Harry through the door which seals off the compartments. Seems he’s none too happy about Harry berating himself. I wonder if Sara can sense what Harry’s thinking. I think she can –- I know she can --the dead-set of her jaw isn’t wonderful to behold. She feels his anger, his hurt, his helplessness and his hope almost before he knows he feels it.
She moves beside Chakotay, crowded into the small space and actually sitting on the controls. Not that it matters, nothing works now.
I move to stand at his other side, and Chakotay turns to me one last time. “If you want to beam over to the other ship, I’ll understand.”
A smile for him. “And let you have all the fun?”
Even Sara’s lips moved, curving into a lopsided, pensive look. In a morbid way I’m almost glad for all of them – either way they’ll be with their shipmates again -- now, or then. He turned to her. “And you?”
She regarded him with a numb look. She wasn’t going anywhere either. All or nothing, we were in this together.
Harry's trying something else -- a last-ditch effort. He's going to collapse the slipstream in the past, by intentionally feeding the wrong numbers, so that if they crew can't reach home, at least they'll be alive for another try.
Chakotay takes my hand in one of his and Sara’s hand in the other, but not before she does something I’d never have expected, not in a million years, from her.
She reached over to me, behind the chair, and drew my head to her shoulder – she had surprising strength for one so little – and whispered in my ear.
