PART FOUR: ETHAN
He felt claustrophobic. His skin crawled. He longed for the mountains and the lakes and the waterfalls and the ocean and the sandstone cliffs; he longed for Beaver's Lodge. He wanted to be surrounded by silence, that in its very stillness spawned the sounds of ocean waves or waterfalls or the distant call of birds that broke into his afternoon reverie. If he listened carefully, he could hear a beaver cleave the water of the nearby river.
He wanted to get away from the throng that jostled him as he tried to pass them in order to move to a corner of the square he'd noticed was less crowded. They were everywhere – men, women, children, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, friends. He thought he heard trumpets sound but that was mostly in his imagination, brought on by the sheer magnitude of the occasion, the total surprise of Voyager's return, her crew the conquering heroes of the Delta Quadrant.
I am a living paradox, a creature of opposites - intrigued, driven by the need to know those around me yet profoundly disturbed by the presence of too many around me. I am agitated, fraught with their intensity to know me, to know too much of me…
Too many people. They swarmed the grounds of Starfleet Headquarters. They quacked about like busy ducks waddling with webbed feet along the pathways flanked by orderly flower beds and undulating lawns. Their beaks opened and closed incessantly in rapid clicking sounds. He almost wanted to laugh as he imagined seeing their movement without the accompaniment of sound. Like a pantomime that, even as tears fell or faces broke into happy smiles, was unable to dispel its comic aspect. Sound and movement were indispensable elements in promoting harmony, creating order through it. He saw it as an essential characteristic in the driving force of life. Alone, it would collapse into caricature, making what was designed to be dramatic, comic or without dimension instead.
He was here to meet Mark Johnson, reason enough to lure him here, because people interested him. He had no other business with them but to observe them. To discern through sense and sight what men and women were up to, what they were thinking, what they were intending, what passion drove them, what loss moved them, what achievements hallowed them. Shift a few of them into different positions and the rules would change - a matter of sheer perspective. What he saw and construed, inferred, assumed, accurately attributed, the object of his observation might view entirely differently. Most of the time his appraisal, instinctive to the point that it made him uneasy, was correct.
It was a dance of life on the stage of life and he was part of it. He was either a patient figurant standing somewhere within the action and observing silently, wordlessly, or he was a minor player, brought in primarily to set things in motion. He could be one of the principals who died, agonised, and with hands and eyes raised heavenwards sing dramatically in stirring, trembling melodies of his sorrow.
Sometimes, he wished he was wrong in his assessment. Then he could return to Beaver's Lodge, sit on the deck, play the cello and forget all his woes.
By the time he reached the other end of the square where he miraculously found an unoccupied bench, he was giving a sigh of relief as he sat down. He heard laughter, heard whoops of joy, tears of misery, of mourning, of compassion, sympathy. Somehow, not a single person made an impression and perhaps that was his saving grace, for the moment he saw Mark Johnson approaching, he was reminded why he was at Headquarters.
"If the sun were shining today, I'd say you stole it, Johnson."
Mark had come to stand directly in front of him, blocking his view of the people, even the sliver of blue that peeked through the grey cloud bank.
"It's not difficult to find you, Ethan Bellamy."
"I attract people like bees to honey?" he asked, his hand brushing over his shock of white hair.
"Your hair turned white ten years ago. Not easy to miss in a crowd."
"You're overstating the obvious," he retorted a little tersely. "Now tell me why I rushed from my cabin to meet you. And here, now, of all places and occasions."
Mark sat down next to him. An affable man in his late forties - too good to be true, according to Wanda - Mark Johnson was to him more the cuddly pup women seemed to like and stroke. No doubt a deep thinker, but way too much the Arcadia type. His head was in the Federation clouds. Wanda was welcome to him. They were exactly suited. They never argued. Any arguments were conducted civilly and despatched with philosophical adroitness somewhere on the Arcadian hills.
"Wanda is apprehensive about meeting Kathryn," Mark started, without preamble. "To tell you the truth, so am I."
"But you are here to meet Kathryn Janeway. You called me here to give you support. You are afraid to meet her. Why the paradox? I don't see why you should be afraid. You did inform this Kathryn Janeway that you got married, didn't you?"
"Three years ago."
"When you informed her."
"Yes."
"And you told her you couldn't wait for her any longer."
"No! We all thought the crew was dead, Bellamy."
"But you couldn't wait."
"I struggled letting go."
"You realise that Kathryn Janeway may view your marriage to someone else - however much you're in love with Wanda, I shall grant you that - as a betrayal. In her circumstances, she was hoping for your constancy. You're just another in a long chain of things she has lost."
"What is this? An inquisition?"
"Why did you ask me here? To hold your hand?"
Mark touched his shoulder. Ethan gritted his teeth as he forced himself not to flinch. He sighed with relief when Mark dropped his hand.
"You're too cynical, but you are Wanda's relative. I was hoping you'd understand."
"An inquisition is furthest from my mind. You moved on. So did Kathryn Janeway…probably."
"Look, it was very hard to move on, you understand? I didn't choose to fall in love again."
"Makes me wonder."
"What?"
"Whether you really loved Kathryn Janeway."
"That would diminish what we had."
"Mark, by the way you fell for my cousin three times removed - I hardly actually knew her, mind you, until Admiral Paris brought her to me that time - I'd say you didn't…really love Kathryn Janeway."
Mark would never explode in anger, Ethan thought as he looked at his cousin by marriage, three times removed. His innate affability made him slow to anger, if ever he succumbed to that emotion. Instead, Mark gave him a resigned smile.
"Ethan, I don't care much for your cynicism. Perhaps I should meet Kathryn alone, after all…"
"And I don't play nursemaid. You fell in love again, married Wanda, felt guilty even as we speak and now you're afraid of Kathryn Janeway, still feeling guilty. Deal with it. Why should you feel the way you do? She probably moved on herself, after you betrayed her so callously by falling for my distant cousin and marrying her and, on top of it, selling Kathryn's dog's puppies all over the Federation. You wrote her a heartless little note telling her you're married. The woman is lost in the Delta Quadrant and the only hope she has of keeping her head and keeping sane is her fiancé waiting for her at home. That alone kept her going for the first few years. Sure, I'd say you were very good at dealing her a blow to the heart."
"Ethan, my friend – "
"The lost puppies were merely a metaphor."
"I did sell her pups…"
He sighed. He could see how Mark had never understood the depths of the woman to whom he had been engaged. He didn't know Kathryn Janeway but the little he’d learnt from Mark and Wanda painted a picture of a woman whom they thought so strong she could never be blown over, even by a hurricane.
It was a mistake men made, he thought with bitterness.
"How would not loving Kathryn Janeway diminish what you had? Tell me."
"What we had, was good. I can never undo that. I don't want to. But I don't think I could ever match her strength. I think she needed me as a backdrop, you know. Something that completed a picture. Sorry… I'm not making myself very clear… Kathryn is unbelievably strong. I know I'm repeating myself here. It's not easy to love Kathryn Janeway."
Ethan had been looking away and turned suddenly at Mark's last words. He had never met Kathryn Janeway, yet the words hit him like a hammer between the eyes. What kind of person was this woman? A Starfleet captain for sure, who braved the odds to bring her ship and crew home, but who was the woman? In the eyes of Mark and Wanda Johnson, in the eyes of Starfleet, in the eyes of her crew, a woman who didn't need anyone.
"But you have a great deal of respect for her."
"Yes," Mark sighed. "I have the greatest respect for her. It's why…" He remained silent for a few seconds. "She never wrote back, you know, when it became possible for Voyager to communicate with the Alpha Quadrant and Starfleet Command. I've always wondered."
"What is there to wonder? It's obvious that she saw to it that every member of her crew got to write their letters first, and anything she wrote would have been to her mother, if she ever wrote at all.
"Still, I'm not sure how she'll receive me. I did betray her by not loving her enough, by not remaining loyal to her."
"Johnson, you're surely not believing the claptrap I spewed a moment ago?"
"But it's true, isn't it? It's why the guilt lingers…"
"Only an idiot would reason like that. You don't know how she will receive you. It should provide quite a spectacle, I should imagine."
"Well, talk of spectacle. I've just seen her, moving away from that small group over there. She's standing alone. I should go to her. Are you coming?"
But Ethan had already seen an aperture in the crowd, seen the woman who was looking in their direction. Mark rose to his feet and walked towards Kathryn Janeway, not looking back again to see whether Ethan remained seated or followed him. It wasn't necessary for Mark to ascertain his intention for he had instinctively risen to his feet, feet that carried him forward a few paces, unbidden, uncharted.
Could the crowd have parted deliberately so that he could get a good view of the woman slated to become an admiral? Could the crowd have made way, respectfully allowing him full view of the woman who had brought a starship and her crew home after seven years in the Delta Quadrant? It seemed to him that way, as if everyone moved in extremely slowed-down action, every single limb, footstep, shrug of the shoulder, turn of the head, even the smiles that formed hesitantly or instinctively on faces, hair that swung lazily as the head turned - every motion appeared like a tiny incident in itself. A miniature of the greater picture in which three people were the primary movers.
Ethan Bellamy didn't believe in providence, that state which gullible people swore, guided their lives. He had lost that belief ten years ago, when his hair had turned white, when his life went from heaven to hell, when all possible purpose that kept him alive on this Earth with hopes and dreams and grand passion and great expectations was taken from him.
He had secluded himself in a cabin in the mountains and there pondered on his life. Tight, hard as rocks were the walls he erected, too strong a fortress to allow anyone entry. That was the way he liked it. He had become comfortable with his second nature.
Now he saw Kathryn Janeway, her stance alone conferring upon her the distinction of aloofness, isolation, endurance beyond anyone's imagination. It was clear to him, engraved with nails upon his consciousness, that a woman stood in a crowd looking stunningly, heart-wrenchingly fragile and alone.
He had been right without ever having seen her in his life. Coming home meant coming to emptiness.
She smiled, greeted, laughed, shook hands, spoke in a friendly manner. Her face, her bearing, her voice revealed nothing of what he saw and what he believed no one else saw.
The woman was bleeding to death inside. He saw hands that perhaps gesticulated a fraction too high, too fast, too slow, too low… Nervous energy? Too busy playing a role?
He walked to within five metres of her. Mark had already given her a hug, a movement in which his friend hesitated first before drawing her into his arms. Then he held her away. She stood, with hands on her hips, then the hands dropped again. It seemed she didn't know what purpose to assign to her hands without giving away anything.
And then her eyes…
They darted too nervously, he thought. Once, they connected with him, a fraction of a second, a moment in the universe of time and space in which he felt the connection.
I
understand, Kathryn Janeway.
I
understand you, Kathryn Janeway.
The moment was over, but whole conversations were conducted along the current of understanding which flashed between them. Her eyes had softened in that understanding, albeit only fleetingly. She continued conversing with Mark, but he remained standing rooted to the spot, too intrigued, too unwilling to move forward or even to move away.
Kathryn Janeway was out of her element. She was bottling up a lifetime of loneliness, of privation. Her reserve served only to enhance the fact that she had given more than what she had received, and that she was never going to receive what she had given. There was no one with her in whom he could detect a certain attachment with the woman, something, anything, anyone to make the detached individual more human, more woman, more home, to imbue her with the joy of coming home to something, or someone.
There was no one with her.
Ethan felt something in him break - a divine fissure appearing in the wall that he erected to keep all pain outside and to protect the despair and anguish and pain and bitterness and guilt of ten years that was inside.
For the first time he felt the need to protect again.
And for the first time, he understood why Mark Johnson had practically forced him out of his seclusion.
You
clever, clever, brilliant philosopher, Mark Johnson. Only you knew why you
brought me here.
And
now, I know.
***********
After seeing Kathryn Janeway looking exposed and isolated, even if she never gave that impression to most people, Ethan's first instinct had been to flee home to Beaver's Lodge, sit on the deck and coax scales and arpeggios out of his beloved cello. The urge to write had started like a silent snake entering his body, slowly saturating his being with grand opening paragraphs, exposés, themes, the tentative introduction of characters, some major, others just on the periphery of his tales.
That had begun since he'd her that day. He had been agonising over his craft, so inseparable from himself he sometimes wondered how he could breathe without writing another word or penning thoughts in a painful poem. While he welcomed his muses, the fighting, feisty, challenging alter beings whom he loved and hated at the same time, the resurging Melpomene had also filled him with disquiet. After Bellerophon, he had sunk into despair; only once Melpomene rescued her charge and given him a work to be read and enjoyed in the Federation outposts. Now, he longed again for Euterpe and Melpomene and he fretted about getting back to the quiet of the Oregon mountains.
But he couldn't go. He had to see this being who intrigued him and filled him with a new disquiet, a slow, burning fire that singed the fringes of his conscious mind, making the need to see her again as urgent and as insistent as his desire to go home and create divine arpeggios or compose iambuses that free-fall into verse.
As a former Starfleet Commander himself, he knew that the Admirals weren't going to leave Kathryn Janeway alone after the debriefings. That knowledge was underlined soon enough, leaving him as outraged as a few other of the Starfleet brass.
"That's a damned shock, Johnson," he told Mark a few days later. "Starfleet court-martial the Federation's legendary captain? Why? She did everything in her power to bring the ship and her crew home."
"Don't I know it! But you understand the debriefings… from there Starfleet may decide to take further action."
"Yes, for sure. I always understood the debriefings as a necessary evil, a formality. But a court-martial? Seems they want her to stew first before they put a crown on her head."
"That's my thought too. I'm attending as a member of the UFP's Pioneer Board. Whole new worlds were opened up by Voyager…"
"You're not there as her friend, her former fiancé?"
"You're not going to hang that on me again, Ethan. But I have told Kathryn I'll be there."
"And some comfort that is, Johnson, when she knows your presence is self-serving…"
"Dammit, man. You're not so innocent."
"My advantage, Johnson, is that Captain Janeway doesn't know me. She won't see me any differently from the way she's going to see those jackass admirals. And frankly, I don't mind."
And so he decided to remain and sit in on the hearings. He was drawn, not only to Kathryn Janeway herself, but to her plight. He sensed in her a complex being, far more complex than anyone he had known, a being whom very, very few could know, except perhaps her mother. He heard that Kathryn Janeway's mother had died a week before Voyager returned home. That must have hit her hard. A mother who waited seven years…
He had sat in the courtroom, a few seats away from Mark Johnson, and watched the proceedings. He couldn't rid himself of the image of Kathryn Janeway - aloof, reserved, isolated. Her face revealed nothing of the strain of seven years of hardship, or of the grilling Admirals Hays, Nechayev and Gordon gave her. He hated Nechayev, cared nothing for Hays and didn't much like Gordon himself and these predators were let loose on a captain who stood stood alone by herself and fought back with great tenacity.
But he could see how every answer, every response delivered smartly, without hesitation, proudly at times, tore a layer away from her strength, her reserve. Very soon she was going to break.
They showed her little mercy.
It became unbearable. Mark got up, and later, he too rose from his seat, looking straight at Kathryn Janeway and for a second their eyes met. Yet, in his ordered, literary mind, he knew, sensed more than actually seeing, that Kathryn Janeway didn't really register his presence.
It was a good thing too.
When he came outside, he saw Mark Johnson standing near a tree and walked quickly to him. Mark looked far from composed.
"I didn't know, Ethan, the extent to which they could hate her so."
"They don't hate her, Johnson. They're pissed that she came back."
"Came back? What do you mean?"
"It would have been better for them, for their image as Federation warmongers, had Janeway not brought home a vessel that came limping back into the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager did what no one else could do: it found a way of dealing with the Borg once and for all. Nechayev, Hays and Gordon should have been court-martialed, not Kathryn Janeway. Instead, she came home and reminded them of their inadequacies. They're not going to like her for a long time."
"Ethan, you're talking about the USS Bellerophon, aren't you?"
He turned cold at Mark's words. He didn't want to be reminded again. The Bellerophon was history.
History.
"No, I'm not talking about the Bellerophon. We're talking about a woman in that courtroom."
"But you hate Nechayev…"
"Don't remind me."
Mark saw he was going to get no more information that shed light on his own past. He sighed, realising they were talking about Kathryn Janeway.
"Ethan, look, I'll do my best after the trial to be there for her. I think she will be exonerated. They're blowing off steam."
"And a hell of a way to do it!"
He was suddenly angry when he realised Mark Johnson was right. Still, it didn't lessen the Voyager captain's plight. He knew, like probably most in the courtroom, that she was holding her own in there. But it was the cumulative, debilitating loneliness he sensed about her that was ploughing through her reserve tanks and taking a whole lot of her with it.
"She'll be on her own after the trial. Her crew has gone…a shame… I always wondered about her first officer. She seemed keen on him."
"But he's gone. He isn't here by her side to offer solace and support."
"He's a Native American from Dorvan V, involved in the reconstruction of that planet."
"But not enough constancy to remain by her side."
"The man is married, I believe."
"That's constancy for you."
"The cynical Ethan Bellamy again."
"I'm going home now. Thank you for letting me tag as your...your moral support."
"Damn you, Ethan. You know that's not why I asked you to come."
"And I should thank you again for knowing exactly why you asked me here in the first place."
He saw the light dawning in Mark's eyes. A light of knowledge: his experiment had worked. Of course Mark just wanted him to see Kathryn. The rest was up to Ethan Bellamy.
"I know?"
"Bellerophon…remember?"
Mark responded by nodding sombrely.
And so he left for Beaver's Lodge, situated on the mountain slopes near the southern coast of Oregon, where he could gaze at the glimmering sea in the distance.
********************
END PART FOUR