PART TWO
Chakotay watched as the senior cadets filed out of the lecture theatre.
"That was a very interesting lecture, Professor," said James Rollins, son of Magnus Rollins. "It's a real honour to have been selected for this class. It's the toughest in the final year curriculum."
"That's why we decided to make the selections ourselves for this year. You're not the best group of senior cadets for nothing."
He smiled at the serious young man. James was going to graduate top of his class and was a great role model to the younger cadets. Chakotay nodded and James quickly joined his buddies who were almost out of sight of the lecture room.
Chakotay walked to his office just off the lecture theatre. He sat down heavily at his desk, giving a sigh of relief. The total concentration on the subject, the enquiring minds of the group of select senior students, was gone and no longer protected his warring emotions after Kathryn's revelation this morning.
So what else was new? Their marriage was a disaster; they were into their third year of a slow decline into odd conversations that ended mostly in arguments, sex which led to nothing but a rancid taste in the mouth. The arguments were conducted politely; Kathryn's face never gave away any emotion, whether it was pain, anger, frustration.
Except this morning.
Her picture stood on his desk. Once, in the first few months of their marriage, they had gone to Risa of all places, to soak up a week of resort sunshine. The debriefings had been long over, the crew had dispersed in all directions and gone on with their lives. Kathryn had been promoted to Admiral and he had taken up a coveted Professorship at the Federation's premier Academy. He had taken the picture of Kathryn, who had laughed into the imager. She looked beautiful and carefree, with the light of the sun behind her so that her golden hair glinted. They had gone into the marriage carefully, knowing that they each had their demons to battle. He had asked soon after Seven left, and Kathryn had agreed. His heart had been raw then, but he had thought Kathryn would soon supplant Annika, and they could get on with their friendship and grow to love one another again.
Had he been too oblivious on Risa to notice that their lovemaking was just...sex? He compared everything they did in bed to...
Annika Hansen.
Now Kathryn's laughing face stared at him and all he could picture was her face this morning.
"Dammit, Kathryn..." he murmured as he rested his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He had transgressed. Again. An aperture to Kathryn's heart had opened, very briefly, too fleeting. But he had seen the hurt, the total desolation before it closed and she was again the wife with no emotions to show - aloof, refined, classic Kathryn. The kind he wanted to ram up against a wall and... "Dammit," he muttered again.
Annika Hansen. Ex Borg Seven of Nine. Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01.
Seven of Nine who came and joined them between the sheets. Sometimes so insistent that he thought... He sighed. In the beginning Kathryn had been understanding, claiming that time would heal his wounds. He had called Seven's name often in his sleep. Kathryn had been compassionate, wonderful, really, in those first months. Time, he decided, had served only to entrench his wounded love for the Borg woman.
The first time he called out Annika's name as he climaxed into Kathryn was followed by a second, a third, a fourth... After that he lost count. Kathryn had been bewildered in the beginning, and hopeful that it would lessen. It did. But it also did grave damage to her and even graver injustice. He knew that she faked her orgasms; he knew that her body shut down the moment she allowed herself to imagine he thought he was making love to the Borg.
In the beginning, Kathryn was Annika Hansen.
Kathryn was convinced that he could never let go of his love for Annika. Did she even notice how his feelings had begun to change? How more and more he wanted to be in her company, how he couldn't wait for her to get home? He was always home before her, and in the last few months, he had taken to preparing notes in his office until it was time for her to finish up at Headquarters and they would come home together.
She couldn't see past Annika Hansen.
He hadn't been able to either. Those first months he hadn't cared because Kathryn's words that it was okay gave him that freedom. He believed he was healing. Kathryn didn't.
Last night didn't help; he was mortified afterwards, knowing how it wounded her. How had they come to this? They thought they had it all worked out and soon they would have a secure marriage, one which enjoyed the full measure of mutual chemistry and passion. Kathryn should have left him to die, not worry herself over her best friend. But she’d married him. It was a choice she made with open eyes, knowing that he was still in love with Annika. He asked, and it was a choice he made too, knowing that he was classic rebound material. They’d thought it would work.
Now, Kathryn's painful attention to ritual during breakfast baffled him. He knew how spontaneous she could be, how free and how carefree at times. Those qualities were all stacked away neatly, just like the excruciating precision of the breakfast table. At night, preparing for bed, Kathryn was hyper neat, folding each garment, placing shoes together with precision, underwear that would be folded, to be placed later in the recycler. Nothing ever lay strewn around, although he knew she was a lot more relaxed than that. If she could just kick off her shoes and let her clothing trail from the lounge right into their bedroom when he carried her sometimes to bed... He shook his head. Kathryn had changed from the woman he knew on Voyager, the captain he admired, the friend whom he loved, the colleague he challenged. Then she had been spirited, humorous, angry, openly demonstrative, caring, compassionate. How he lived in those days for a spontaneous touch of her hand on his shoulder, his cheek, pressing a finger sometimes against his dimple when he smiled, saying, "It's not fair."
That was not the Kathryn he married. It was not her fault.
Kathryn's words had been direct, no frills around them to soften her own pain. He called Seven's name during their lovemaking. They hit him like a poisoned arrow right between his eyes.
"Why don't we dissolve this, Chakotay? It's been almost three years, and I - "
"We were friends once. Great friends. Please, have patience. I do love you..."
Her eyes flashed, whether from fury or injury, he didn’t know.
"You loved Seven of Nine. I understand that it's not something that will go away next time we have sex. We both married for the wrong reasons. Mine's different from yours, but equally wrong."
"Then why don't we fight for it?"
"What is there to fight for?"
"Everything, Kathryn," he had responded with heat. "Everything! We were best friends once!"
"And now we're strangers. Tell me, why won't you let me go?"
He could tell her he was falling in love with her. He could tell her he couldn't live without her anymore. That was what astonished him. He had prayed that one day he could love Kathryn again, deeper than when they had been on Voyager. Then it happened. When, where or how, he couldn't fathom. It grew, stealing up on him like a thief in the dark night, making it worth waking up again in the morning and seeing his precious Kathryn next to him. He could tell her that, whatever the motivation behind his asking her in the first place, and hers for accepting his proposal, he couldn't accept that his marriage was failing. He couldn't accept failure. Same as he knew Kathryn would never admit to failure. Had he been holding her back? If she wished to leave, there was nothing he could do.
They had reached an impasse.
For some bizarre reason, he was glad of the impasse. It kept Kathryn married to him. Even if... He rubbed his hands over his face and grimaced at Kathryn's words at breakfast. Why had they married when there was so little foundation for a solid union?
Seven if Nine. Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01.
After seven years of Kathryn’s cold-shouldering in which she turned hot and cold on him and turned him into a begging dog, he had given up. His heart, ego and sensibilities bruised and shattered, he had responded to Seven of Nine's ministrations, her love, her uncomplicated and unconditional affection for him. Seven had begun to reach out to him, and the initial flattery that he could be needed by someone and that she found him attractive, soon turned to something deeper. They shared their first kisses; Seven had been an apt pupil ready to learn everything. In his arms, she gave everything in full measure and held nothing back.
They made love. His brain and heart too ablaze in the exploration of his new-found freedom, he had lost count of the number of times that they had made love before their return home. Seven was generous, and he had poured his heart and soul into the relationship that asked so little and gave so much to both of them. He had been happy, overjoyed. He’d pinched himself several times in disbelief that someone could need him so much and wasn’t shy about expressing that need, whether in words or deeds. The desire that he be loved for himself too, that his happiness mattered to her, made him shower her with his feelings which, after only a few weeks with Seven, he had realised, was turning to love. Nowhere was there a figure of doom or a mysterious entity in his subconscious telling him that it was all a mistake, that it wasn't real. He loved her; she drew from him passion that was blinding. Afterwards, he would hold her tightly to him when, like a little child, she would sob in his arms.
He could never wait to get off duty, never wait to sit down to dinner with her. Some days he waited for her in the cargo bay, standing in front of her regeneration alcove, waiting for her to wake and step down. Her eyes would glow with fire as she stepped into his embrace. They'd make their way to his quarters in great haste because he hadn't been with her in two days. The minute they stepped into his cabin, he'd look at her and say, "I can see you're wet and ready, my love," before he'd tear her suit from her body, fall to the floor with her and make passionate and intense love.
She wanted to learn about lovemaking and he was the very willing tutor, who introduced her to so many aspects of the act of lovemaking that she'd scream his name and he'd hear it echo into his dreams long after they made love. He loved her, loved her body that sang to his touches.
Seven could be amazingly soft and feminine one moment and the tigress the next; lovemaking was never the same from one night to the next. They slept together, made love, made love again, then slept, then made love again. And it was very good. Gradually, Kathryn left his heart and all he could see was the once aloof, cold former Borg who, at night, whimpered delightfully in his arms as she reached her peak. And many times she cried, the emotion too much, the moment of climax so overpowering and thunderous that it left her breathless, dizzy. Then he would look at her, free in her passion as she lay beneath him, her sheath reluctant to release his still throbbing flesh. He would smile gently, tears in his eyes as he bent to kiss her fiery mouth, remaining locked like that for endless minutes.
Seven of Nine had given him back the ability to feel and to love again. Before Seven, Kathryn was always hovering at the perimeter of his consciousness, where he had been stunned and stunted emotionally. Theirs had been a relationship full of complex layers. Kathryn had kept him dangling between love and hate, and he had grown a shell thick enough to withstand her saying 'no' time after time to him. Until Seven of Nine - Annika Hansen.
"I love you, Annika," he had whispered in the darkness of his cabin, holding her as if he could never let her go. "I love you so much..."
It had been so hard to get Annika out of his mind and heart...so damned hard.
Chakotay closed his eyes at the memory, hitting his hand against his head to drive it away, out of his mind.
Annika Hansen...who had betrayed him.
How could Kathryn know that last night, when Seven threatened to derail him again, it was in warning and frustration that he cried out her name? He had wanted her to go away. She had been gone for months from his heart and mind and conscious thought. Just last night... Her image, the red lips curling in a taunt.
Seven had played a brilliant game with him. He had been too proud to admit he had been caught by her. Now, he wanted her gone forever because she was destroying his marriage to the finest woman, who didn't deserve such unhappiness.
Chakotay touched the cool glass of the photograph, his fingers caressing Kathryn's smiling lips.
"I guess you won't forgive me soon now..." he murmured softly.
A knock on the door alerted him that it was time for his next class. A group of third year cadets for Tactical Training Theory. As he left his office to welcome them to the class, he thought that he'd go to Kathryn's office after classes and talk to her about their marriage. He didn't want to give up. He sensed, perhaps only belatedly, that she wanted him to ignore her suggestions of giving up on what she called their farce. Calling Annika's name when he reached his peak had turned Kathryn ice-cold and unable to unwind again. It was a bitter pill to swallow that he couldn't give her pleasure in bed, yet whenever he turned to her to initiate lovemaking, she never rejected him. She sought him during the night to lie close to him, always wanting to lie in his arms, nuzzling her face in his neck. Sometimes, he would hear her sigh as she settled into sleep. Sometimes, they'd be in the lounge and he'd catch her smouldering look. She wouldn't demur when he lifted her up and carried her to bed, always hoping that tonight was the night everything would come right.
Kathryn wasn't stupid. She wanted to save what could be saved as much as he did. He had never known her to back out of anything. She wouldn't back out now.
He was sure of it.
"Good afternoon, Professor," said Douglas Carey, son of the late Joe Carey as he entered the room.
*********
End Part 2