Work Text:
"The only thing I wanna do
Is make it up to you"
- Taylor Swift, "betty"
/
Chakotay found Kathryn in the garden in front of her family’s farmhouse, kneeling in the dirt and pulling weeds. She wore a dusty-rose sundress and a wide-brimmed hat, and with the rows of tomato vines, he could have walked into a memory of New Earth. He knew he had a bad habit of idealizing their five weeks there - it had been quarantine, not shore leave - but after ten years on Ysida, New Earth had begun to look like paradise.
He had thought he would never see her again, let alone like this.
She flipped up the brim of her hat and smiled, the lines around her eyes like rays of a star.
“I thought you hated gardening,” he teased.
“As a kid, sure,” she said. “Mostly because my parents wanted to teach me.”
“Contrary, were you?”
“Wasn’t the only one.” She held up a gardening-gloved hand for him to pull her to feet. “What can I do for you, Captain?”
He immediately regretted showing up in uniform. He tugged his jacket and cleared his throat. “I have a message from Starfleet … ”
Even on the grass, her spine straightened and her jaw firmed. He had seen this before; once she went back to being the Admiral and dealing with crisis after crisis, his chances of ever getting to say anything personal would shrink to almost nothing. He’d spent ten years regretting all the moments he’d let pass before.
Ten years, and he still didn’t know what to say.
“ … But it can wait a couple of hours.” He knelt down next to her, not caring a particle whether his uniform picked up the dirt. “Need a hand?”
“Not a bare hand, mister,” she shot back, her tiny smile belying the sternness of her tone. “Those are nettles. Here.”
An old wicker basket sat nearby, holding shears, trowels and all sorts of tools, including a few spare sets of gloves crumpled up at the bottom. One faded command-red pair was bigger than the others; he wondered if they had belonged to her late father. They were warm from the sun when he put them on, and sturdy enough that he defied any nettle’s sting to get through.
“Watch out,” she advised him as he pulled up a bundle of spiky leaves. “You gotta get down to - ”
“Down to the root, I know,” he said, tossing them aside and reaching back down again. “Otherwise they grow back. My parents taught me the same thing.”
He tugged the long, stubborn root until it finally came free, and all the shoots it had sent up along with it. The sight of it gave him an idea, and he laughed at himself internally; even after all this time, metaphors were still easier.
“There’s actually something else I wanted to get to the root of,” he admitted. “Something I should’ve said years ago, before … before it grew invasive.”
“Oh?”
She sounded wary, and he couldn’t blame her - but he cleared his throat and went on, looking down at the flowerbed rather than meet her eyes.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he said. “For what happened with Seven before I left.”
“Goodness - ” Kathryn let out an uncomfortable little laugh. “We talked about it back then, remember? You don’t owe me an apology. I was fine. I am fine. Pass the shears, would you?”
She began clipping away yellowed leaves and wilted flowers, as brisk and efficient as he’d ever seen her at the controls of the captain’s chair. He might even have believed that she was fine - if it wasn’t for the way her hat brim hid her eyes.
“I know you … meant to be fine,” he said. “I could see you trying. I let it go because I’d already been assigned to the Protostar, and I didn’t want to rock the boat in the short time we had left. That was a mistake - and it’s not my only one.”
“I was worried about her, I admit,” she said, in a voice as clipped as the blades of the shears, “But she was an adult, and so were you. You had every right to a relationship - ”
“No, Kathryn.” He laid one gloved hand gently on her bare arm. “I didn’t have that right.”
Crickets chirped. A bumblebee buzzed among the flowers. A solar tractor hummed along the cornfield across the street. The wind whispered through the trees. The country was never really quiet, but Kathryn’s silence was deafening.
“We both know we promised each other something on New Earth,” said Chakotay, breaking it. “Don’t tell me you forgot, because I didn’t.”
Finally, Kathryn looked up. Her eyes under the hat brim were bright with unshed tears in the fraction of a second before she looked back down.
“I never expected you to live up to a … an ancient legend,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been fair.”
She reached for the shrub she had just been pruning. He wasn’t as familiar with the flora in this part of Earth as he was with the ones native to Dorvan V, but he could see how the other plants had crowded around this little one, taking over its air and sunlight. He could also see that it still had green leaves left, and a single flowerbud waiting to unfurl.
“I gave it to you anyway.” he said. “And then I broke it. And I’m sorry.”
Kathryn set her jaw, took hold of one of the invaders, and yanked. It didn’t come free, but something in her thoughts must have, because while wrestling with the plant, she let out a question she must have been wrestling with for all these years.
“Of all the women in the galaxy,” she said through gritted teeth, “Why … did it have to be … Seven?”
She glared away his silent offer to take over, but when he braced her shoulders from behind, she managed to pull up the plant after all. It was beautiful, glossy and healthy; it reminded him of how guilty he used to feel about weeding as a child. His mother had told him there were no such things as weeds, really. Every living creature had its place, as long as it didn’t overstep the place of another. He had done his share of overstepping in the past.
“Because I admired her,” he said, in answer to Kathryn’s question. “Her strength, her resilience, her care for the crew … Looking back, I realize now how much of you I saw in her. That wasn’t fair to either of you.”
“No,” said Kathryn, with a sigh. “It wasn’t … but I wouldn’t have stood in her way. She was like a daughter to me.”
“Wait - 'was'?”
“We haven’t spoken in years.” Kathryn gently brushed away some fallen leaves, the same way she used to touch her shipmates on the arm or shoulder for comfort. “Starfleet rejected her application. I would’ve raised hell for that, I even threatened to resign, but she was gone the very next day. Last I heard, she was in the Romulan Neutral Zone, working with - well, they call themselves peacekeepers, but my colleagues call them vigilantes. I don’t approve, but I understand.”
“You know Seven.” They shared a wry smile. “She’d never have let you resign for her. Selfless to a fault … like someone else I could mention.”
Kathryn’s smile faded to a frown, as if the compliment had struck a nerve. She shook her head and dusted the dirt off her gloves. “I’m not selfless, Chakotay.”
“Aren’t you?”
“When we were stranded in the Delta Quadrant, there were two things I wanted more than anything else. One was to get back here - ” She waved a hand at the blue sky above them, the flowers in front of them, and the earth below. “And the other … ”
“Yes?”
“Chakotay … the other was you.”
It was all he had ever wanted to hear. Holding Kathryn in his arms again, after ten years and several universes away, had been one of the happiest moments of his life, but so was this. His heart didn’t have room for so much joy.
“So that message from Starfleet you came here to deliver?” She narrowed her eyes, her voice dropping into her bridge officer’s rasp. “If it’s about leaving either you or this garden, it had damn well better be important.”
“I’m afraid it is,” said Chakotay, feeling equal to deal with anything right now, “But at least we’ll be facing it together.”
He took off his gloves, put them back in the basket, and held out his hand - not formally across a table, but casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She dropped her own gloves, scooped up her workbasket, and laced her fingers through his.
They fit as perfectly as they had all those years ago.