It’s hard for me to talk about her, the beautiful blond woman that waltzed onto this ship not only once but twice and stole the heart of the man I consider to be one of the best I’ve ever known…not that I’ve known many. I know that I shouldn’t blame her, it wasn’t her fault that her people found her and used their own devices to make her forget. But she could have given Chakotay another chance, even after she didn’t remember.
After all, he did. But he’s always been like that, forgiving and kind. Hell, he took me, didn’t he? A 13 year old in the Maquis – not too many others can claim that feat of intelligence.
But, I digress.
Kellin first came on board Voyager over a month ago, searching for a member of her Ramoran society that had ‘run away’ from their world. Gee, sounds familiar, person running away because they didn’t want to be there anymore. She triggered an intruder alert and lost her personal cloaking device that made her invisible, and well, as they say, the jig was up.
Kellin stayed for almost two weeks, searching for the stowaway she claimed was on board. They finally flushed him out with some trick Chakotay told me about but I forgot – it broke his cloak and well, boom, 3rd party standing in the transporter room.
I suppose I could blame this on my telepathy. I kept my silence the first time after she left, because what’s the point of talking about something that no one else remembers? I’d sound like a raving lunatic, nothing more and nothing less for that matter. After all, their pheromone secretion is supposed to be infallable. It is infallable, for all they know.
But they didn’t know about me.
They knew I was a telepath. Kellin, that overly-sugary-sweet woman who’s double-tipped elfin ears I wanted to rip off and shove down her throat when she broke Chakotay’s heart, treated me like a child. I suppose I couldn’t blame her, she was shocked at my size and the fact that I was what I am.
I had to bite my tongue hard, when I saw her again, lying there on her bed in sickbay. It wasn’t hard to play the little charade, to go along with everyone else that didn’t remember her. Though I might as well have been telling the truth. I could have spoken for her I suppose, but I didn’t need them calling me a liar, number one, not that it’s happened yet and probably won’t happen since Chakotay knows what’s good for him; number two – I plain flat out didn’t want her to know I could remember her. A covert society that has an outsider impervious to their pheromones…I don’t know what a ‘neurolytic emitter’ does, but if it has the same effect as it did on her, well, I don’t want to.
Chakotay didn’t remember the first time she left. He wasn’t happy, but the man isn’t stupid either. He knows the order of the universe, knows who can be with who and who can’t. He let her go, as much as he did the second time. It was just harder, because he didn’t remember the first time.
He moped, I suppose, that first time that she left us and went back to her ship, planting a computer virus that wiped all existence of them from the ship’s systems. Moped about for the few hours that she could still be in his mind. I almost wanted to tell him then, but seeing him back to his old self after only a day, if that, made me as usual shut my mouth and go on about the routine this ship has worked itself into over the last three years.
And to think I’d almost forgotten her as well.
Funny that I can’t sense them when they’re on board, but I can remember them as long as I want.
It’s a telepath’s curse. That’s something my brother used to say, whenever I remarked or complained about something being wrong. He’d say, ‘It’s our curse. We’re telepaths.’ At the time I was barely more than 7, and like so many other things he told me, I accepted it without question, comment, or complaint.
Too bad he’s dead now. I’d really like to ask him what he meant, because for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.
I mean, I can to an extent. It’s terrible that I can remember Kellin, I’d give a lot to forget that she came on board and broke Chakotay’s heart. He fell in love with her twice, but after they wiped her memory she couldn’t be bothered to give him another chance. No matter that we granted her asylum and put the ship in danger for her. It didn’t matter.
That man should never have put my quarters so close to his. Being an empath really bites the bullet when two people are in love across the hall, and doing things that people in love do. I can’t see through walls, but I can think through them well enough, even without trying. Believe you me, that night I wished I had to try – they turned my face and ears red, those two.
Then again, I know the Captain loves him even though she’ll never admit it, and that he loves her, even though he’ll never do the same. I wonder how I’d feel if they ever started living together.
Most likely I’d ask for a change of quarters – I’d never get any sleep.
I shouldn’t feel so awful towards Kellin. Most of my anger in the situation – one that’s not any of my business, might I add just for the record – comes from that simple fact that she asked him to tell her all about their relationship, after her memories of it were gone. And she didn’t trust him enough to stay. Her intentions were true, when she came aboard. She did love him.
And at one time, he loved her, too. Two times, in fact, in a perverted sense.
Perhaps it’s good that she’s gone. And perhaps it’s good that Chakotay won’t remember, no matter what he wrote on that pad of paper in the mess hall the other night. He’ll read those words someday and not know a bit of it.
