I posted this to ASC and fanfiction.net weeks ago, but thought it could use a
refresher here, since I haven't posted in over...ack...two months.

Disclaimer: ST:VOY and all related characters owned by Paramount Studios. No
copyright infringement intended.

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Its been a while, Chakotay.

Your communications blackouts do damage, you know. At times I find myself
afraid, lost in them. No black hole ever exerted quite as much force.

Do you care? Or are you so far gone into your pedantic, planet bound civilian
life that the mere mention of astrophysics...bad memories, surely...drives
you to seclude yourself away? I know even more of myself than you after all
these years, an unusual position for me.

I like to pretend to still know you. In all truth, I can't claim expertise on
either of you anymore. I can make only the sketchiest suppositions about your
lives...civilian, obviously. A certain grace has replaced the reserved
formality you both held, that I tried to coax away so ineffectually. I have
your last holo here on my desk, months old. You smile at me, fingers
entwining the simple wedding bands.

You both smile, and we need not pretend it is anything but artificial
affection.

Once, a very long time ago, I do believe you, at least, cared. Time, as Miral
says, is a cruel bitch. Life as well. So young and rebellious, she curses so
eloquently, and understands so little. Rather like B'Elanna, long ago.

As I remember, you dislike talking about them. Fine. Paris does as well. As
he explains it, opening the wounds long enough to try leaves him lost as
well. Lost and angry. For Miral's sake, he really doesn't want to hurt either
of you. So he stays quiet and helpless, flies off his frustrations. He drinks
as well.

I envy him the escape.

Were you aware that the Captain was once the ship's alcoholic?

Of course you were. You absorbed everything, with your unfathomable staring
and silences. You had to note the ration loopholes, the empty glasses in the
ready room. Some peculiar sense of command dignity kept me in control unless
by myself, and some amusingly antiquated sense of honor kept you out of my
face. Any other XO would have raked a commanding officer across hot coals for
the weakness.

Then again, perhaps that was what I subconciously wanted.

I was starving for your attentions, Chakotay. Don't pretend honor kept you at
bay in that particular case. Honor didn't keep you from plundering another
man's salvation.

You always had her, you know. I watched, painfully, those initial months out
there, the initial years. She was a deprived child, emotionally raw and
practically pleading for you in every way but the direct. You pushed her
away, pummeled her with your far and between bursts of fraternal, paternal
devotions. I pitied her, even as I pitied you for completely missing...no,
deliberately shunning...the best opportunity for love and happiness anyone
could possibly have hoped for in our situation.

Do I contradict myself? Adjust. I haven't made a point of altering myself
over the years. You should be used to it.

And so it goes. The initial years, the initial lack of consumnation...only in
part command distance, in part personal sacrifice. I held the doors open to
your happiness.

Torres eventually got tired of the fruitless waiting and slammed those doors
for me, moved on to another unlikely one, one as needy as she in his own way,
as fragile of ego and temper. I should have been relieved, I suppose,
overjoyed at the omen of happiness the union brought to Voyager, at the moral
freedom it should have offered me.

You had to fancy the second daughter of my soul, did you not?

Oh, I did love Seven of Nine, so much. I saw the relationship forming long
before either of you could have admitted it to yourselves. I rarely put store
in religion, but I found myself bent in a ball praying for her more than
once. And for myself. You see, the command distance had finally begun to
chafe by that point. With all of my matchmaking ducks in a row, my crew
reasonably settled and content in their Deltan exile, I no longer had any
excuse to push my own problems away.

I ached to be loved, Chakotay, ached with an intensity I had never felt
before. I came to feel a certain burning hatred for you...for the walls you
had erected seemingly overnight, for the bridges you had burned. In the
beginning, you and I were more than colleagues, if less than lovers. We had
friendship, ballast, connection. By that seventh year we had nothing of the
sort. Perhaps I spent too much time in my holoprogrammes, perhaps I became
too much of a pessimist to suit your company...I remain uncertain. I only
know that our traditional meals together became more chore than pleasure for
both of us, and we made no attempt to socialize between. You had Seven, for
the wistful watching, and Torres for friendship. Odd, how the more she
received from life, the more she needed from you...you were her confidant in
all matters Paris, her spiritual counselor, her link to a distant Maquis past
I suspect you both found difficult to remember with any clarity, much less
honor.

I came to feel a certain burning hatred for you both when Tom stepped into my
ready room not long after our return from Quarra, medical floppy in one hand,
an odd little stuffed toy in the other. I seated him, quickly, and paced,
recognizing the wilted defeat in his eyes, a defeat I had spent years
battering away at. He spoke, monotonously at first, then with increasing
ferver, anger, fist balling about the little toy. The floppy went into my
terminal and we watched it together, he putting his medical training to
ironic use and pointing out the nuances to me. DNA strands, genetic encoding,
inherited traits. He actually cried when he remarked that the baby could
never have blue eyes. I didn't understand the importance, of course, put it
down to Klingonese genetics, but his next few words cleared the matter up.
B'Elanna, he said, had been caught looking at fetal manipulations again. He
hadn't understood why it was still so important to her, an obsession, until
the Doctor had threatened to call security unless she explained herself,
completely.

Tom broke off on the story at that point, staring in bafflement at the toy,
and I had to coax him on. He finished, reluctantly, tonelessly. "I wanted to
give this to Baby." He explained. "Its Paris family tradition, you see, one
of the few I've actually managed to keep to. It has a bonding matrix, weird
alien thing, but it recognizes the family DNA coding...failsafe inheritance
gift. Word has it that the only reason Dad didn't toss me out on the stoop is
the fact that the toy didn't reject me, he had to accept that I was his." My
pilot laughed then, that broken laugh I had heard and hated so often when
he'd first come aboard. Gradually, he quieted down, and met my eyes, cold
anger settling in the depths of the beautiful gaze. "I'm not my father." His
fingers pointed out the final divergent strands, the perfect match your DNA
and Torres' made, the perfect copy of it found on Miral's chart. He leaned
back, shoulders squared, tones calmed, even. "Well, I don't believe in stoop
babies. It just hurts like hell that Baby'll never have this toy. Even Dad
wasn't going to take that little bit of honor from me. Your fucking Maquis
had no right."

My fucking Maquis.

I could say something witty and vicious now, but I didn't then, and I've come
too far without looking back to believe in second chances.

We sat in silence, Paris and I, for a good hour or more. There were a hundred
questions I perhaps should have asked, a hundred issues to cover. I could
have made it a medical ethics issue, a security issue, had Torres trussed up
and on her toes in the brig as punishment, but I chose not to. I could have m
ade it a matter of public knowledge, of example, stripped away her dignity
and assuaged whatever vindictive longings Tom must have had, though he would
never have admitted them, not our good, reformed Paris. I could have assuaged
my own pangs of fury and betrayal...but in the end, it was never about the
Doctor, or Torres, or Paris, or even the Captain.

Only you, the quiet man.

I despise that self-sufficient reserve. I suppose it must allow for a lot in
the way of emotional protection, and I do grant you admiration for the wisdom
of it.

One day I may find the audacity to tell you so personally, instead of in logs
voiced while staring at an outdated holo of you. One day I may send these
logs to you, out there on your frontier planet...so much to say, to tell.

I dream of you, you must realize. Not your traditional nightmares...once, a
few years ago, I got it into my head to actually give a damn about what had
become of you, and researched your home of choice. The travel vids show a
plains area, grassy slopes, wildflowers, canyons, oddly undeveloped
coastline. Your home, I understand, plays parlor to many varieties of
thornless rose. Gothic, really. At times I imagine what it must be like for
you, isolated from our modern artificiality, spending your days in woven
fiber, chasing Seven and your honey-haired, blue-eyed child through the
fields.

At times I think you undeserving of the honor.

You don't know about Miral, I'm given to understand. Nor does she, for that
matter. Tom Paris has been a driving force in her young, glorious life since
day one, the perfect father. I can even say that he finds joy in the
position, though at times there is perhaps a sadness in his eyes...a sadness
that there has never been a real daughter to give that toy to. It sits in a
crate in my attic right now. One bitterly cold Christmas he put it there
thinking to spare himself some pain, but if only...

Can you ever realize how much joy you've drained from all of us, Chakotay,
drained and bottled up, cast into your own existance? Do you never wake in
the morning, watch Seven stir, listen to the pitter pat of that golden
child's feet...think of how grotesquely blessed you are to have them, to have
your simple joys? Do you never feel undeserving of them, never remember the
fiery half-Klingon who did naught but love you and has never stopped living
with her dishonor, never remember the angry con who came to worship you as
equal parts enemy and mentor, never remember...

My fucking Maquis, my quiet man.

Perhaps your silences and that funny, disaffectionate smile say more than any
of us care to know.

Oh, I don't blame you, per se. I still have that stubborn command streak.
Politically, I was always responsible for your choices. Personally...I chose
our lives, thread by thread. Had I made an effort early on, had I not played
officer and lady, had I...

What use is culpability?

Its been a while, Chakotay. A very long, empty while.

FIN