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JANEWAY: If I'd accepted reality six years ago, I'd have settled on the first M class planet we came across. Instead, I'm thirty thousand light years closer to Bloomington, Indiana.
SEVEN: Minus several members of your crew.
(Seven displays the list of deceased crewmembers.)
SEVEN: Ensign Marie Kaplan, Ensign Lindsay Ballard, Crewman Timothy Lang.
JANEWAY: Is there a point to this?
SEVEN: Every person on this list died under your command. You accepted their deaths. But I don't believe you'll accept mine. […]
EMH [OC]: Doctor to the captain. I need to see you and Seven right away.
Saved by the com. Not for the first time. But if the Doctor hadn’t paged them right then, Janeway might have had trouble controlling her temper. Or her tears. She knew full well Seven had not meant her any harm when she had displayed the list of the crewmembers who had died under her command. Seven could not understand how each of these names was a still painful scar on her heart. And now that Seven was safe, now that she could, at least for the moment, remove the prospect of a death she would, indeed, not have accepted, all those other deaths came back to haunt her.
Unable to prepare herself for bed and knowing the sleep her body craved would not come, Katherine Janeway curled up on her recliner, under a blanket, and tried to read a book without taking in one word. It wasn’t the first time people had died under her command. She had lost men in her unit when she had been a lieutenant fighting the Cardassians. She had lost one crew member during her time as a commander on the USS Billings, from a stupid warp core accident. But these dead, these Voyager dead, were different. Because she couldn’t blame anyone but herself.
Lt Veronica Stadi. Lt Commander Cavit. Ensign Charles Young. Ensign Claudia J. Craig. Lieutenant S. Seaborne. Lieutenant J. Lyman. Lieut. Commander T. Ziegler. Lt Commander L Mc Garry. Commander J. Bartlett. Tech. Timothy Lang. Ensign Lyndsay Ballard. Ensign Marie Kaplan.
Several of those people she had never even had time to know, since they had died when the ship had been pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the array. Others, she would have had time, but she hadn’t made it. One would think they had nothing but time, and yet, even when they weren’t under assault from one of the many hostile forces of the Quadrant, Janeway felt she had no time at all. At first, of course, she had felt she had to stay aloof – be “the captain”. In truth, she had enjoyed the distance – it had, along with the firm mask of command she had perfected, allowed her to hide her insecurities and her guilt. She had done what she had been told, in circumstances no one had ever predicted. There was no blueprints for a first captaincy with no return. Along the way, she had realised that ultimately, she could only rely on herself to find the best way to get her crew home, and this realisation had come with the fact that she needed to open herself up and to trust and rely on others. However, when during the voyage her ship had encountered death, she had always buried her emotions as deep as she could, for fear they would destroy everything she had built.
She would never, however, forget them. Like she would never forget witnessing her father and her fiancé sinking slowly into their grave, or her uselessness in saving them. Each time she had lost a member of her crew, she had written a letter of condolences to the family, knowing her words would be scant consolation for their loss, especially coming years afterwards – she had only recently been able to transmit them to Starfleet Command, after all. All of these letters had been an exercise in the art of not saying too much, nor too little.
How could she explain to Ensign Charles Young’s family that she had been in sick bay when the young man had breathed his last, so horribly burnt that even the Doctor’s skill hadn’t been able to save him? She had always been afraid of fire – perhaps because even in the 24th century, in the rural community in which she had been raised, fire was still a hazard that could devastate several farms and umpteen lives. Since her father’s and Justin’s deaths, Janeway had had nightmares of drowning – she could see herself suffocating under a flue of ice. But since the volcanic accident on the N45 asteroid that had taken Young’s life, she had had other nightmares – of seeing him slowly consumed by fire, his protection suit engulfed by flames, his face contorted in agony… She shivered retrospectively. No, she would not have wanted to convey his or her anguish to his family. It had been a tragic accident. And yet, she was responsible, because she had ordered that deuterium-sourcing mission.
Janeway rose slowly and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to wipe the dreadful images.
“Coffee – no, decaf, black.”
She would not sleep, but there was no need to be hyper-alert.
Another face recalled herself. Lyndsay Ballard – was she really among the dead? Their last encounter had been unsettling, to say the least. Janeway had been desperate to know if the young woman had blamed her for sending her on the ill-fated mission. After all, even in Starfleet, how many times did you encounter the dead ? Lyndsay’s answer had not satisfied her. Of course she had been to blame. Even though everyone knew that a career in Starfleet entailed risks, it was hard to imagine your own death when you were twenty.
There was a death which bore even more heavily on her shoulders than all the other ones. Voyager’s mission had been a short, low-risk one. Therefore, for several ensigns, it had been their first posting. For Harry Kim. For Celeste Tal. And for Marie Kaplan. Janeway took a sip of the cooling coffee and almost choked on its familiar and acrid taste. The bitterness of the memories had coated her mouth with iron. Ensign Kaplan had been found in her quarters by Tuvok, as she had not reported for duty a few months after their arrival in the Delta Quadrant. He had beamed her to the medical bay, but the young woman had been dead too long for any hope of resuscitation. She had hanged herself. Called by the Doctor, Janeway had stared helplessly at her ensign – her responsibility – unmarked except for the bluish tint on her face and the red mark of the rope on her neck. How could she not have seen the young woman was suffering? How could it had come to that? The ensign’s logs had made for grim reading. As a Betazoid, Maria Kaplan had been unable to shield herself from the constant input of other people’s minds and had absorbed all the negative feelings following the array’s destruction and the perspective of an endless wandering into space. Moreover, she had apparently been suffering from a kind of claustrophobia, and the combined effect of her psionic abilities turned into a disability and that had led her to take her own life. Janeway would never forget herself.
However many people she rescued – Kes, Seven, Icheb… - the dead would always outweigh the saved on her conscience. Maybe this was why she was always ready to sacrifice herself, as Seven had judiciously thrown back at her once during one of their heated discussions. Because it would always been less painful to die than to send someone else to his or her death. She had died, and yet she had survived. She had seen herself been beamed in space, she had died several deaths, she had seen her alter ego die. She knew death. She didn’t fear it. The burden of command, though, was such that she was doomed to go down with her ship, but not before. Her crew would never let her. They needed her to be all-knowing, almighty and all-present. And she was not.
When morning came, Kathryn Janeway did not appear on the bridge for the morning shift, bright and early at 0800. It happened sometimes, when she had work to do in her ready room. When Chakotay asked the com where she was, several hours later, as he was beginning to worry about her absence, the com told him Captain Janeway was in her quarters.
The voice that called out “Enter” was a rough charade of the captain’s usual commanding tones. Subdued and hoarse, it immediately heightened the concern Chakotay felt for Kathryn. She hadn’t isolated herself since The Void, and it had taken her several days then to feel better. He knew the worry about Seven and Icheb had taken its toll, and of course, the last few months had not been smooth sailing either. It was only a week since Kathryn and Tuvok had almost become Borgs. Not so long ago, Kes had come back to wreak havoc on Voyager. And he knew she had been shaken by Admiral Hayes’ communique about the status of the Maquis.
“Kathryn?”, he called out, having no intention of retreating, but unsure of his welcome in the darkened room.
She didn’t reply, and he found her on her sofa, a little ball wrapped in a blanket, tucked in a corner. Red-rimmed blue eyes, underlined by deep shadows, stared at him as he approached.
“What do you want, Commander?”
He came to sit beside her, and she did not push him away. He took that as a good sign, despite the use of his title which warned him that she had erected a barrier of formality between them.
“I was worried about you, Captain.”
“I’m fine.”
He reached out and put his hand on her knee – this, too, was allowed, and he felt her shiver slightly under his touch.
“Want to talk about it?”, he tried, aiming for levity.
She shook her head like a child.
“All right, then.”
His hand progressed to rub her arm, still hidden under the blanket, her shoulder, and her neck. Since she still didn’t protest, he held her close and she buried her head in his neck. He felt her sobs, her whole body shuddering as she let go years of grief and undone mourning. He held her until she finally stilled and nestled herself closer in his arms. He kissed her brow, nothing else. This was not the time for more. She just needed to know he was there for her. And she did.