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Some anniversaries are anticipated eagerly. Some loom in the calendar, their long shadow keeping the days before and after in a penumbra of anxiety and grief. And some sneak by, almost unnoticed.
For the first few years of their journey, this was the kind of anniversary whose presence Kathryn felt in long, tortuous anticipation of its arrival, her torment peaking over the twenty-four hours of its duration, her mind projecting the events, strictly according to the timeline imprinted on her memory. Her order to Tuvok, to fire the tricobalt devices, carved in never-changing words, the epitaph of her once-standard Starfleet life.
It wasn't even a single day, for which would she choose? The day they arrived, her crew decimated from the outset? A day of mourning to mark those who should have shared their Delta Quadrant life, but who never had the chance to even know it. Or the day it dawned on her that they were staying; that she had chosen the long way home? In the end, she chose the latter for her personal commemoration.
So it had been for years, this anniversary casting its long shadow. For how many years? Fewer than she felt a date of such significance deserved. Initially she had thought that the visceral ache of that date arriving in the calendar, its approach looming large in her mind, its presence painful, its retreat to a new phase of mourning, would be the pattern for evermore.
In the end it hadn't even been ten years before that primitive ache she associated with this anniversary began to fade, and unexpectedly she started to experience years when it slipped past her, unnoticed and unacknowledged. The surface wound to her soul, which had fractured in concert with the array, had healed; the resulting scar became its memorial, ensuring it was never forgotten altogether, but could simply remain unnoticed unless her eyes happened to glance across it. Her pain became a silent traveler on their shared journey.
This year the day almost went unmarked. An innocent act of checking her calendar, and her eyes cross that old scar in her personal timeline. Her memories reactivated, playing the familiar reel of fifteen years past. Up to this point It had been one of those years when she’d forgotten entirely, her month unsullied by the pain of recollection. But by chance she spied the date, thwarting her subconscious effort to route around the events of her past.
Fifteen.
It felt significant. It’s one of the anniversaries she should have remembered. She recalled her younger self, eagerly setting out on her mission. Her brand new ship fresh to explore, her newly-assembled crew eager for their first mission together. She'd expected to complete her three-week mission and report back, ready to hear her next assignment. It was ( would have been ) the routine life, simultaneously everyday and extraordinary, of a Starfleet captain.
Then the unthinkable had happened. It shouldn't have been unthinkable. It's one of the risks one accepts … that the one-in-a-million event might happen to you. But almost no-one, of the billions of humans in existence, thinks that way. Rare events, notwithstanding the mathematics proving that they happen all the time, are supposed to happen to other people, not to ourselves. Despite many extraordinary tales, events barely survived, and the occasional missing ship. Despite the long-delayed reports of a crew's tragic end, or the eternal mystery of a ship never found. Those things happen to other people.
She rehearsed the names of the dead. All her crew lost to the Delta Quadrant on that day and since, recalled in her quiet act of remembrance. And she was thankful. That enough had survived. That their journey continued, precarious though it may be. That, robbed of her ordinary Starleet career, she had an extraordinary one instead. Not merely captain—no captain was ‘merely’ captain. But some, like her, have to go further, to try harder, to keep going when she is utterly alone, to hold the lives of her crew in her hands, to make decisions day after relentless day that would keep them alive, no matter what it cost her.
She thought about who she'd become. In some ways she’d been hollowed out by the experience. Less sentimental. Less idealistic. More pragmatic. Harder. Oh god, had she needed to become harder. Not because there was no tenderness left, but because that tenderness was so exquisitely fragile that it had to be handled with the utmost delicacy, protected with an ever-toughening armor from the scrapes and bruises of this unexpected life so that it may survive, may serve as her humanity, despite the temptation to be rid of it so she can never hurt again the way she did on that day.
She didn't know it at the time, but that first wound, that psychic insult of suddenly being ripped from the life she’d expected, ran deep. In fact it was time—the accumulation thereof—that taught her how deeply it had penetrated, despite her efforts to walk it off, to wave it away as nothing, because she couldn't be wounded. She didn’t have time. (‘ Not enough time!’ came a sound-memory of the Caretaker’s voice, unbidden into her mind.) She had to carry on.
So she carried on. She carried on and on, and that primary wound, the harshest, the deepest because it had landed on uncalloused flesh, had simply waited. Waited for her to acknowledge it. Patient. Preserving the pain and the trauma. Crystallizing it, anticipating for the time, years down the line, when she could finally pause from her never-ending responsibilities and deal with it.
Fuck, that had been a low point. When she'd realized the cavernous abyss of her own anguish and wondered how she would ever climb out. If she'd had the capacity to deal with it contemporaneously it may not have hurt so much. The fresh wound would have been semi-anesthetized from the shock of the cut. Tending to herself would have been just one of dozens of things keeping her mind occupied. That, she liked to think, she could have coped with.
But … fresh trauma, experienced as memories that may as well have been happening right now, even though the events were long past… When every other distraction had been taken away until she had no choice but to look her own pain in the eye… The way it stared back, unblinking, nearly broke her. Nearly.
But, able to survive the initial onslaught, the first few unremitting years, and the hard, hard work of acknowledging her brokenness, she had rebuilt herself. She would never be just another Starfleet captain: Janeway reporting for duty, Sir. Her path had led her in a different direction, its challenges molding her into her new identity: Captain Janeway. That Captain Janeway. The legendary Delta Quadrant leader. The one who'd survived long enough to make into Starfeet’s history books, her career never consigned to a footnote, but inspiring volumes.
Yes, she'd gained from the ordeal. But it wasn't the kudos that she treasured. They'd made something new and unique out of the ashes of their first mission. The survivors forged a new way of living; a new way of healing and growing together. Crew had become family. Colleagues had become friends. The generational ship she and Chakotay had spoken about in the early months was starting to become a reality. Alright, their journey looked to be closer to 20 years than 70, a fact of which she was immensely proud, but 20 years was almost a generation. No one could put their life on hold for decades. In the end, not even her.
=/\=
Her thoughts are interrupted by an electronic plea for entry. She turns away from the stars, the sweep of her ready room, its elegant and familiar lines, brush over her eyes as her gaze is pulled expectantly to the door.
“Come in,” she calls, before his familiar face is revealed.
He smiles that warm smile, the one that makes her melt so easily, like chocolate in the sun, and she goes to him. She is as drawn to him on day five thousand four hundred and seventy-nine as she was on day one.
“Chakotay,” she goes to him and wraps her arms around him, pressing her lips to his, and, surprised, he takes a moment before he returns her kiss.
When they part, he is delighted, and bemused. His smile and his eyes give him away and she can read him like one of her ancient books.
“What happened to your ‘not on duty’ rule?”
She shrugged. “It's a special day. Besides, if the Captain can't flex the rules, who can?”
“I don't think that particular rule comes from Starfleet's rule book.”
“Then why does it feel so good when I break it?” she asks, her body pressing against his.
She sees his eyes darken, but he resists her advances. “You have a job to do first. Why don't we pick this up later?”
“What job? I thought I'd completed today's scheduled tasks.” Not that there aren’t always unscheduled tasks, she just hopes this is one of the good ones. The odds are in her favor. He only indulges in kissing her on-duty—despite her rule, which is more honored in the breach than the observance—when all is well.
“I have a crewman, patiently waiting outside who would like to see you.”
She nods, and gets him to check that her lipstick isn't smudged before asking him to show her visitor in.
“Mommy!” Comes the delighted squeal from the little girl as she runs to Kathryn, who catches her under the arms and lifts her up, sitting her easily on her hip.
“Hi, sweetie. What have you been doing today?”
“Sam showed me her microscope and taught me all about bugs! And after lunch we had a cooking class with Chell in the mess hall.”
“Did you help cook dinner for everyone tonight?”
“We made cookies! I brought one for you to try.”
“Oh, I see. Well. It's very important that I try this, but I need something to go with it.”
Without even asking, Chakotay had prepared her coffee and carried it to the table, as Kathryn carried their daughter. The three of them sit together, Amelia squeezed between her mother and father, her parents’ arms around each other's shoulders.
If this is what those fifteen years have brought her, she wouldn't swap them for anything.
=/\=