Rating: PG.
Summary: Unimatrix Zero was wonderful—until it didn't end so much as just...peter out. Which is probably just as well. TPTB would most likely have mucked up any emotional resonance they were aiming for, anyway. You can see that their intention was to let Janeway recover miraculously, as befitted the lofty, surreal, moral representation they wanted her to be.
Well. I'm here to say that the Voyagers were human beings and we love them that way—with all their human nobility intact.
Not a spoiler exactly, but I'll note that the episode "Latent Image" figures into this coda. Having seen that episode would be a boon to understanding this story; sorry. I'll also point out that my little tale here has nothing to do with the novel The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl, which is a fantastic read, btw, if you are interested! :-)
Author's Note: "Friends don't let friends beta drunk." Thank you, my Sober Minions. We'll always have fanfic.
Copyright June, 2003; by LA Koehler
"Are you alright?"
The words were so low, so gentle, Janeway wasn't certain she had really heard them, lost as she was in the battle of wills with herself. But when she looked up to see the Doctor actually propped in the doorway she gasped, and covered herself with the blue scrubs still clutched in her fist.
"I'm no longer your patient, Doctor, you've released me," she tried to sound level. "You've no right to come in here."
She thought he would leave, or apologize. Orate about his rights in his own sickbay, or bluster over his chronic mistreatment. But he continued to stand against the doorframe, and she continued to make no move to put on the clothing now pressed protectively to her breasts. At least she assumed they were her breasts and not some reconstruction of the Doctor's whim. Who could tell, behind all the scars?
"Kathryn." She was taken aback by the foreign sound of her given name in his voice. "I didn't come here as your doctor."
Her lips parted as she drew a breath. They must have, she reasoned—she hadn't noticed them quivering before. The Doctor's head cocked fractionally. He was studying her face. She couldn't fault him; she had been doing the same thing to herself, moments ago. He must have realized the direct attention was a mistake because he averted his gaze.
But when he spoke again his compassionate eyes locked with her distressed ones and didn't stray. She flushed with gratitude, realizing that she appreciated the small gift.
"I only came to check on you. I knocked several times, but… You've been in here quite some time; I was worried."
A sterile silence cloyed around them again. What could she say, really? How long does it take to put on one's clothes and leave a washroom?
"You're very perceptive."
She heard footfall as the eyes drew closer, their neutrality allowing her to maintain her dignity. The scrubs shuddered in her fist. To his credit he made no move to touch her, but she felt bolstered by the eyes just as surely as if he had.
"Usually. But this time I was tipped off," she heard him admit. "I released B'Elanna while performing your last surgery. When she came in to change, she became...rather passionate...about her current physical condition."
"B'Elanna," Kathryn anguished—then hardened. No one needed to hear her guilt, she resolved. It had been her decision, her choices—her people. And now, her guilt. Ironically, it was probably the one thing that could never be taken away from her. Or was it? Without the shielding benefit of the Doctor's neural inhibiting drug...
She nearly sobbed.
"Shh, she's fine," the Doctor held up a hasty hand between them, misinterpreting her distress. "Mr. Paris was here, and Samantha. Let's just say," his eyes wandered the bulkheads, "the repair crew performed quite a respectable job, considering this room was destroyed twelve hours ago," he trailed off.
She watched him shift gears, return his scrutiny to her alone. Kathryn was surprised to feel a rush of apprehension, an irrational urge to flee. His left hand—still raised in supplication—moved carefully, calculatedly, to her shoulder. His thumb purposely glided over a regenerating scar above her clavicle, inviting it into their circle of intimacy like an old friend instead of the vile intruder as Kathryn was inclined to see it. Her breath hitched in apprehension, her eyes averted without her permission. Dammit!
She forced herself to look back at him, intending to hurl at him all the anger in her belly, to stab him with the humiliation—
Humiliation? The realization startled her more than the Doctor's unexpected touch. Why did she feel humiliation? She didn't give a damn about him seeing her naked body—it had never crossed her mind. Not years ago, not now.
But then, of course, she knew. It was far worse than that.
She knew that he had seen her naked indecision, her inability to cope with something—and that galled her! He had stood there for who-knew-how-long and witnessed a depth of weakness she had never before let slip—not to anyone, for any reason. A sharp exhale did nothing to dispel her awful feeling.
She had felt so goddamned cocksure until a moment ago! Sure that she was ready to get on with their journey. Sure that she should leave sickbay and return to duty, even if only from her quarters.
She'd had every intention of continuing to feel that way, too, for the crew's morale. And she might even have been able to convince herself eventually that she really was fine...had she not been interrupted.
But the Doctor's intrusion took that option away. He had caught her paralyzed by an insecurity so vast it must have filled the room. She wanted to be furious with him!
But she couldn't. Looking now into the concerned brown eyes before her Kathryn felt the anger flow away. She knew her vitriol would be misplaced. She exhaled impotently.
"Perhaps, though," he murmured as he watched the ire drain from her face, "I should have foregone replacing the mirror."
When it became apparent that she wouldn't answer, the Doctor decisively angled his chin toward where his hand gently lit. Kathryn understood that he was trying to draw her eyes downward with his own, to the...the goddamned ravages on her skin.
But no. No. Still staring into his eyes, she was resolute in her decision—now that she had looked away she would not be trapped by the sight of herself again. A small sigh escaped the Doctor as he looked back to her face.
"Kathryn, it's not this—these—at all, is it? We both know they will fade in time as the regeneration process continues," he urged her to confide in him. His baritone was rich and warm. She wondered idly if he was conscious of its soothing effect.
His thumb ran once more over the scar; she couldn't resist tightening her shoulder muscles because of it. No resistance. Resistance was futile. She regretted the reassuring squeeze that told her he had noticed, and closed her eyes...
In the transporter room, before being beamed to sickbay, she had become aware that they had been rescued and were back home. She remembered counting—one, two, three—and that simple number was like a primal rage of victory to her! Arms upraised in her mind, so indescribably grateful that each of them had been rescued!
That wordless triumph had mellowed into an abiding sense of contentment during the first several surgeries. As she drifted in and out of awareness she became aware of sensations that she couldn't quite place, but that spoke of home.
Murmurs over the biobed. Chakotay's clean, earthy scent close by. Touches of reassurance—her forehead, her arm, her shoulder. A waft of Tom's softly spiced aftershave as he tended to B'Elanna. The tinkling of female laughter among the medics—her crewmembers—indicated that things were progressing well.
By the time she became awake, aware, and more or less restored to her natural self, the sense of wellbeing was so pervasive that it was easy to convince herself the ordeal was over. She had immediately thrown herself into catching up on ship's business. Most of the news was good—no Borg in sight, repairs progressing. Crewmembers came by to visit, to congratulate, to smile.
It was easy to believe that they had sailed through fairly well, considering. Easy to believe that they had been victorious, not victimized. Inconvenienced, not physically infiltrated. Not butchered. Not savaged. She had felt strong this morning after surgery, when she'd deflected the Doctor's ever-pervasive concern and demanded release to her quarters.
She had felt whole again.
Then she had peeled back the covers and removed the first layer of that lie, to walk to the washroom. Then the next one, as she had carefully shrugged out of the blue scrub that she herself had not changed since their return. And the final layer, when she had opened her eyes and become frozen to the floorplates by the riddled body in the mirror where she should have been, but wasn't. How long had she been there, she wondered, struck incoherent, before the Doctor had become concerned enough to intrude?
"You must have imagined what this would be like before you made your decision," he gentled into her reverie, still prodding.
Gooseflesh crept across the surface of her pockmarked skin, as glacially as the nanoprobes had coursed through her bloodstream to create the horror. She moistened her lips with the anguish on her tongue.
"My imagination, Doctor...was grossly inadequate," her whisper screamed.
The Doctor's face twitched. He had seen the woman before him in a myriad of states during his years as Voyager's physician. Calm, cool, collected. Surprised, shocked, outraged. Sick, deranged, depressed—even dead.
But never overwhelmed.
He searched her face and his own programming for the right thing to say. He wasn't certain yet where their talk was headed, but he did know where the healing should begin.
"You haven't touched any of this yet, have you?" He looked again at his own hand still resting on her shoulder. She looked at him as if he were mad.
"No, and I don't intend to."
"Why?" he pressed.
"You said yourself, they'll fade—"
"Evidently not in your mind!" The soft rush of his words extolled her to pay attention. He knew that the body she saw in the mirror was temporary, but still shocking in its devastation. "Don't let this—" his furtive gaze seemed to reopen the buckshot of scars covering her, "—have a power over you that we went to great lengths to deny the Queen!"
"We denied her nothing, dammit! That's just it!" Kathryn hissed, grasping for the words, kicking down an encroaching panic. She sucked in a breath past vocal cords so tense they hummed with the air exchange. A shaky hand brushed her hair back from her forehead; a gesture designed to calm herself.
Had his breath not been simulated the Doctor would have held it. He didn't dare to interrupt the flow of release from her.
"It was all so black and white," she sneered at herself, "so clear-cut. Either we'd fail at our mission and never know it—lose the whole thing when our minds were stripped. Or we'd get the hell out of there and laugh like Ferengi robber barons. Pat ourselves for our cleverness and sigh over how close it all had been. I was terrified, but I felt that...that at least I knew the risks and possible outcomes! I acted based on that assurance—that I knew!" she spat the last word like a poisoned arrow.
"But I knew nothing," the words oozed from her like decay from a punctured carcass. The transformation from one sentence to the next startled the Doctor anew. "And now I come in here and I see... I saw things I hadn't considered."
The Doctor mulled her words. Did she mean the degree to which her body had been assimilated? Or some finer point of their plan that had been forgotten and could have made a difference? Or something else entirely? She was looking beyond him now, her eyes unfocused. He wasn't sure if she was looking into the mirror there—or much farther away than that.
"Say it, Kathryn! You know what it is. Trust me and say it." The faraway look became brittle as she bore back at him.
"I'm afraid." Her whisper cracked on the unfamiliar word as if the sharp shards of its edges drew blood. "Not like always, not the healthy fear that senses danger, or deceit, that keeps my people out of harm's way. I've always been confident that, no matter what, they get my best. But now..."
She swallowed convulsively, rushing on as if fearful that if she stopped it would be for good. "Why didn't I consider...that I could get away but still lose parts of myself to that bitch? Why didn't I consider the possibility that she could be defeated but still steal something that we can't get back! Can't replicate, can't replace, or regrow!
What if my failure turns B'Elanna bitter again, in ways she'd never even dreamed of years ago! And Tuvok—" she shook her head once, her eyes steel as she imagined her culpability in her friend's injury, "Tuvok looks...shredded." The Doctor was already shaking his head in response.
"B'Elanna has fared best of the three, I assure you," he leaned forward urgently. "Frankly, I'm more concerned for Tom since her outburst than I am for her! But I also understand that Tom is glad she has 'released the safeties', so to speak, so soon. I meant it when I told you B'Elanna would be fine. I'm satisfied with Tuvok's progress even if it seems slow to you! And to top it off, we've succeeded at our mission—"
"But at what cost? Tuvok hasn't even woken up yet! Who the hell knows what he's lost, what he's suffered, because I was shortsighted?"
The Doctor cocked his head. "That's the third time you've mentioned oversights on your part. The question that raises in me is," he posed, "what does Kathryn feel that she's lost?"
He ignored the half-hearted wave of dismissal.
"You did the best you could with the time we were allotted! The Borg are something straight from human nightmares—it's not hard to see how someone might avoid delving too deeply into certain areas of—"
"Someone else—not a good captain!" she made each word distinct. "God, Doctor, I never worried before about making my decisions—whatever the outcome, I'd always been good at making the best decision possible with the information at hand. Yes, I've worried about not having all the information! Yes, I agonized over which of my crew would be involved, especially on Voyager! Always have, always will! But this fucking mission..."
She trailed off, pressed the heel of her hand to her temple. The Doctor knew better than to reach for a diagnostic tool. He was here in a greater capacity than as physician and realized it. Much as it pained his protocols, he waited.
"This mission, Doctor...this mission was..." a ragged sigh interrupted the thought. "Too much. Too much, and too many, and... Too close. Too fucking close." Her shoulder trembled beneath his hand, heightening his concern. He could see her, now, back on the cube ship...
"I could hear them, you know? I wasn't one of them yet—the day was still young, though!" she tried to joke but nearly heaved on the forced chuckle.
"But I knew what it would feel like— to lose oneself. They've all 'forgotten' but the Queen hasn't. Somewhere deep inside her, if you can keep your individuality like we did...well, B'Elanna and I, anyway," anger hardened the words, "you can access the madness they all felt as they drained away."
The Doctor was horrified. A terrible memory to retain to be sure, which he filed away to ask her about later. But retaining something was not the same as losing something. He waited for her to go on, but could no longer override his programming to do something.
Still, the fact that he answered that imperative by squeezing her shoulder sympathetically surprised him.
"No one is faulting your judgment on this issue. Whether another approach would have worked or not is a moot point—what you did choose to do achieved our purpose, so now we live with it—with the victory, and the consequences."
"Agreed!" she raised her voice. The Doctor frowned. Had he missed the point?
"And I stand by that decision! I stand by my call! It's just—" another tense exhalation escaped her. She seemed to deflate beneath his hands; he strengthened his hold on her shoulder. "I'm not...certain that I would be capable...of making it again."
Ah.
A rush of recognition ran through the Doctor, straight to the root of a memory he often fought to suppress. Which was ironic, since he had initially fought so hard to remember it.
No matter. He knew exactly how to help her now. And he knew, too, that she'd eventually be all right.
"Kathryn. Listen to me. You think she took your confidence, your ability to act instantly that makes you who you are—makes you Captain Kathryn Janeway." It was a statement, not a question. "You think she did, but she didn't. Your confidence isn't gone. It's just...off, for a bit."
"You don't know that," she shook her head dismissively.
"Yes, I do."
"Look. This is very kind of you, but—" her fingers fluttered impatiently before her mouth.
He could see that she thought him presumptuous or placating, but that was all right. He didn't expect her to think clearly in her understandable state of distress; he recalled that horrible feeling himself all too well. The left corner of his mouth quirked in a rueful curl of forgiveness.
"In that book," he murmured, "which is my memory,
on the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you
appear the words, 'Here begins a new life'.
A quiver raced across her jaw muscles.
"What?" she was taken aback.
"A very wise woman told me that once...when I was having a crisis of confidence."
Uncertain, Kathryn looked up at him wordlessly.
Still holding her shoulder, the Doctor confidently took her left wrist in his other hand and lifted it to her chest. He did not force her when she balked, but neither did he let go. After a moment she relaxed, and he placed her hand against her own skin just beneath her collarbones, covering it firmly with his own like a warm bandage. She screwed her eyes shut. Quietly, he watched a tear escape down her face and trickle onto his shirtsleeve.
"Before the miracle of regeneration," he began softly as her heartbeat slowed, "people were philosophical about scars. They believed that scars told a story about where a body had been, what had occurred in a person's life. Or perhaps more important, they were simply more willing to acknowledge that it's the scars we can't see that do the real damage.
"Remember that in The New Life sonnets, Dante wrote of a time when he was paralyzed by a grief that seemed so overwhelming he feared it would consume him, so he lay down to die," the Doctor continued. "But then a wonderful thing happened. A concerned group happened upon him, and they sat with him and nurtured him while he pondered his sorrow, and recovered. In the end, he credits their "counsel of Love" with saving him from oblivion." He knew she knew the story. He paused to dramatic effect, making sure he had Kathryn's full attention.
"If such a therapy was as powerful for me two years ago as it was for Dante Alighieri twelve hundred, then I'm willing to bet there's still a little magic left in it for Kathryn Janeway, today." He grinned convincingly.
He watched her face carefully as she recalled his crisis of ethics over the Jetal-Kim tragedy, and its application to her own current despair.
"I want to believe you." The gravelly whisper complemented her haunted eyes.
"You haven't had time to process any of this yet, Kathryn. Something huge has happened to you. It will take time, and thought, and talking to work it out." He stressed the last with a small grin but no small emphasis, implying that he understood what a vaguely horrifying prospect that part would be, for their self-contained captain to let down her defenses.
He was testing the waters with her, studying how his comfortable predictability sat with her. He paused again, evaluating the woman. Was she ready yet for some 'normal' again?
"Listen to me. Your confidence is thoroughly buoyant—"
"I had always thought it was, but—" she rushed breathlessly.
"Your confidence," he intoned with his own unshakable confidence, "is thoroughly buoyant. It will come back. Just let us help. The way all of you helped a certain doctor through a terrible time not so long ago."
"It wasn't so bad," she reassured him with a tremor in her voice. "You did great."
"Then you won't mind if we all check in on you obsessively for the next few weeks, will you?" he trumped. "Because in time you will be fine, too." And he knew then that he had her, though he noted happily that she didn't seem to mind.
They stood frozen in their tableau of empathy, in a timeless connection of healing, until a tentative knock at the doorplate jarred them back from a thousand years past. They both knew who it would be; the only other person aboard who would negotiate the turns necessary to intrude on their out-of-the-way pocket of Sickbay, especially knowing the captain was there.
Kathryn remembered too late how awful she looked as the dark head popped into the opening. Had she warning, she would have hidden. But as it was, she needn't have worried.
Though the clutched surgical scrub covered few sins, he never once looked at her. His attention flicked around the entire room, taking in the fact that he had barged in on a 'situation' before it rushed to her face, searching for the only answer it needed—to the question of whether she was all right or not.
It was funny, Kathryn thought—the things that brought a person confidence. Though another tear streaked down her cheek, she tried out a grin.
"A moment, please, Chakotay," she croaked. "Then I'd like to go home."
Chakotay hesitated, looking to the doctor for confirmation before tapping his fingertips to the frame. His brow remained furrowed with worry but a relieved ghost of a grin played at his lips. "Alright then; good," he deadpanned, a contrast to the intensity his eyes couldn't hide. "I'll use the time to make sure the carpets are completely dry." His voice dropped to a calming whisper. "I'm right out here."
The Doctor continued to stand patient and sure—his hand to her hand to her chest—awaiting his friend's wish. And perhaps, even, his captain's command. As they both knew the man in the passage would wait, as always.
As always. The very phrase itself implied a comforting routine. Normalcy. And if she were capable of thinking the word...
"Now what?" she sniffed and wiped her right palm across her wet cheek.
He tapped once the fingers that were still upon her shoulder, then let his hand slip down to clasp her arm before taking a step back.
"Go home. Rest. I've heard from a reliable source that those clean carpets lead to a warm bath and a bowl of chicken broth. My exact prescription for you, as it turns out." They nodded at each other gently.
"Chakotay is a smart man," the Doctor continued. "We're not going anywhere anytime soon by design, not chance. The whole crew needs some time to process these last few days. I've noticed the literature and media resources are being accessed like mad, and the holodecks are running on an open door policy. There are several contests of strength or skill that I am personally aware of, though I beg you not to ask me to reveal the details—some of them may be, shall we say, beneath a captain's approval. But they will let off steam, so..."
He felt like he was babbling now. But on the cusp of her departure he was second-guessing. What if he hadn't said the right things? Or what if he'd said too little? What if he hadn't gotten through to her that she was admired and loved, and that if she'd only tap into those resources she'd gain the strength necessary to be whole again, too? He sighed. It was an ongoing process; he would be there as her friend.
Having learned from the best, he could do no less.
"And when it is time to move on again, Doctor? What then?"
He paused before answering, her voice was so trusting in its hope that he knew. But there really was only one answer to give.
"I can tell you this: it was only after embarking on his la vita nuova that Dante passed through the Inferno and Purgatoria to attain Paradiso. I'd say—Captain—that you're already halfway there." He smiled to see her face melt with relief.
Kathryn raised her chin in a salute of gratitude. With a countering nod the doctor backed toward the door, pleased. But then he paused.
"Until the scar tissue fades I want you to remember something. Your scars speak for billions who can't do so for themselves. For millions who are trapped—every time they regenerate—in a nightmare of knowing what they've lost. Think of it as Dante would," he offered. "You've helped all those people, and you did so in a victory of such magnitude that it took an entire body full of scars," he finished with a storyteller's flourish, "to tell the tale."
His satisfied grin echoed in her watery eyes after he departed, most likely to pass the nightlight on to Chakotay down the hall, she surmised. She found the idea of their need to support and protect her comforting, tonight. After this past week, she would let them. Another change wrought by the Borg that she hadn't reckoned on. But at least this one was positive.
Okay. She would do coffee and talk, have tea and tears. She'd let herself discover what else was changed in her. And, good or bad, she would adapt—on her own terms.
She still wasn't comfortable with the fear she carried, still doubted her ability to make another call like this last one. But she saw that her confidence wasn't irretrievably lost to the Queen as she had feared. It was being kept in trust by the fierce loyalty of her officers and her friends, to be returned to her when she felt up to it. Knowing it was in good hands made all the difference.
Kathryn turned to retrieve her softest nightclothes from the corner bench—leave it to Chakotay to know by observation which were her favorites—and stopped as she reappeared in the mirror. She let her scrubs drop to the floor.
Kathryn stared, immobile for a moment, before giving a small mental nod. Had the biggest scars faded a bit since she had come in? She thought they had.
She was more than she was before, she decided—not less, as she had feared. She had done some good. They had all done it together, she corrected. Just as she would regain herself. With a little help.
Her left flank quivered—a weak spasm in her new lower back. Enough standing still, she decided; it was time to move. She knew she could make it to the waiting arm down the passageway. From there, she knew, she would be just fine.
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