The Dying of the Light

the bookending epilogue to "Footprints in the Snow"

by

vanhunks

Rating: PG-13

Code:  Chakotay, Justin Tighe, J/C

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, Janeway and Chakotay. No copyright infringement is intended.

SUMMARY: Once again, like so many years before, Chakotay and Justin Tighe meet.

Acknowledgement: MaryS, as always, for her fabulous work in editing this story.

NOTE: This story is the bookend - the epilogue  - scene many readers wondered about after reading "Footprints in the Snow". I hope I've answered their question! Those reading this story and who didn't read "Footprints" should also read the first story for the sake of continuity, I suppose.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

PART ONE

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
                                      -  Dylan Thomas

The deep russet glow of the Yucatan sun as it hovered just above the horizon made him reluctant to climb down the Great Xthipo Cenote. Chakotay paused for several minutes, his eyes glued to a landscape soaked in mysticism, kings of the sun, pyramids, ancient rituals…

This was the Yucatan he loved. Evening encroached slowly, the sky transformed by the leisurely release of shades that changed from early sapphire to an intense orange-red burn. He inhaled deeply and allowed the air to fill in his lungs with the goodness of the earth and sky. How could he have forgotten Earth's beauty that instilled such peace in his heart and soul?

It was as if his feet simply carried him here, inexorably, without any consideration for duty or former antagonism or that old, deep-rooted loathing towards all things familiar, all things that reminded him of his heritage. The Yucatan was ruthless in peeling away his abhorrence, only to expose what had been there all his life.

This is my land, my home…

A last, lingering gaze at the sun silently sinking behind the horizon. A flash of other sunsets, of an icy planet and a girl with hair the colour of the evening glow brought him to the present. He stepped closer to the edge of the sinkhole. Of all the subterranean caverns in the northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula, the  Great Xthipo had always been the one he visited during his Academy days, and those times he had been on leave while serving on the USS Pendennis. He’d go diving, plunging into the depths of the cavern pool, find the entrance to the tunnel that led to the adjoining larger cavern where there were little sandy or rocky ledges he could sprawl his body on and relax, staring at the stalactites that jutted from the ceiling - a metre, two metres long.

Every year without fail, he visited the Yucatan, until that one fateful year when he had met Justin Tighe on Tau Ceti Prime. He remembered how he had decided against coming to Mexico, how his father's call had sent him into a kind of resentful depression, how nothing that Earth offered felt familiar to him. He had wanted to get away from those reminders. No, he corrected himself mentally, it was not so much getting away from Earth as bypassing it completely. So he had collected his Limpet from his ship's shuttle bay and headed straight for Tau Ceti Prime.

Where he had met Kathryn. The same Kathryn, his captain, who didn't know that he had met her before. How strange, that that crucial meeting with Justin, his rescue of Kathryn, her love for her fiancé and her father impelled the first desire to seek his parents and reclaim his heritage and traditions. He had realised then how life was too short to linger on differences and hatred and anger.

Years later, on the Liberty, he had been surprised to see Kathryn, a surprise that had instantly been replaced by a deep sense of recognition, of awareness, of seeing in person at least, the visual validation of all his imaginings of the preceding years. Kathryn, more beautiful now than when he’d first seen her during her rescue, when her beauty had struck him even as she lay unconscious. Kathryn, her face strong, full of character, whose leadership he instantly recognised and acknowledged. Above all, Kathryn who filled his heart with such longing - a desideratum - but who did not return his feelings so that he had begun to accept that she would never answer the call of his aching songs of worship.

Was that perhaps why, without announcement, without warning, his feet had carried him here? To this cenote, this rugged Yucatan landscape that always, when he had been angry, tired, or desperate, agonizing over the loss of his family and friends, had filled him with peace, could quietening his savage heart?

With a sigh, Chakotay bent down and gripped the metal brace. Several thick ropes were attached at various points around the cenote; almost slipping, he managed to wrap one around his wrist. Then he slowly lowered himself into the cavern, a drop of around twenty metres. He felt no discomfort, glad that he had kept in peak physical condition fighting adversaries in Voyager’s holographic boxing ring under the watchful eye of Boothby. His palms didn’t burn as they usually did when he scaled to the surface. Years ago the Heritage Foundation Authorities had constructed a platform right at the point where he touched down, otherwise he’d have had to lower himself into the water and swim across to the nearest rocky ledge. The narrow wooden strip extended from the rock ledge to just where the rope now hung next to him. Chakotay walked across and seconds later he stood on the rock. The cavern was large, a forty metre by forty metre area with the height from the water’s surface to the ceiling around twenty metres.

He looked around him, awed once again that he now stood on hallowed ground. And what a sight! The cavern glowed in a gentle transformation of colour, inspired by the light from the opening above, through which the dying rays of the sun mainly touched the rims, but enhanced inside by hidden switches to give off an eerie rainbow brilliance. Stalagmites resembled tall Day of the Dead dolls in colourful dresses – thin dolls wearing richly textured ball gowns, with skull masks, except that the masks all had Kathryn’s face.

Chakotay blinked at the unhappy analogy, not sorry when the image of the dolls slowly receded and the stalagmites once again stood regal as they rose from the cavern floor, their mingling colours still managing to cause a burn in his chest.

He stood there, uncertain of his next move, his thoughts a constant stream of memories of her. He could never bring himself to tell her how he’d rescued her once, that they had met before when they had both been much younger. She had never given any indication either that there had been a connection between them, that someone might have told her about her rescue.

Over the years, on Voyager, he had lost the desire, the urge to tell her. In the beginning, he had been assailed by a burning eagerness to claim acquaintance, to drop names, like a star struck fan informing her that they had met before and the unhappy circumstances of that meeting. She had sheltered her own frailties with intense obsession, had placed the needs of her ship, her crew, her duty, her responsibility as head of her family before all her own needs. As close as they were as friends, as wide the chasm to share such intimacies, to tell him of her loss because she desired to confide in him. Always, he sensed what she feared – the vulnerability that would accompany such deep revelations, the courage to put her heart at risk again. Kathryn closed off that corner of her heart and as her personal needs were obliterated one by one, his own need to share his knowledge had become irrelevant.

Why was he here in this cavern then? So that he could finally lay to rest, bury the ghost of Kathryn? To celebrate one last time that what he wanted to believe had died?

"It is after all, the second of November, Chakotay," he heard a voice echo through the silence of the cavern.

Honouring those who had passed on.

Chakotay showed no surprise at the sound of the voice. In fact, it was as if he had spoken his thoughts out loud and the speaker had responded naturally to him. His gaze had been directed at a particular stalagmite - a Kathryn doll - and now he stared across the darkly gleaming water and his eyes followed the movement of a figure that, God-like, seemed to walk on the water.

His sudden impulse was to look down first to remind himself that he was wearing his red Commander's uniform with his Maquis rank pin. Another impulse made him touch his chest. The measured rhythm of his heartbeat was reassuring. Only then did he look at Justin Tighe, admiring the ice white nehru suit he was wearing.   

"Every stalagmite is a doll," Chakotay replied as he moved to meet Justin on the platform.

"And every doll is Kathryn…"

Justin smiled. His ghostly movement had stopped and now they stood facing one another. Chakotay's hand rested on the railing. It was an eerie feeling, that of Justin's eyes boring through him, looking into his heart, reading his mind.

"Yes," he admitted, "every doll is Kathryn."
      

"Then why are you mourning, Chakotay? Kathryn is alive."

Although Justin's smile touched his eyes, Chakotay sensed a sombreness in them.

"She is alive, yes," Chakotay replied. "She just does not see me, Justin. It is as if she has stopped living, breathing, or seeing my needs. Everyone's but mine."

"You may be wrong - "

"No, I am not. I came here to mourn my loss, for I have to accept that everything you told me so long ago about Kathryn - that she'll love me, that she'll reach for me, that she'll recognise a kindred spirit in me - everything that I hoped for, has not materialised."

"I told you it would not be easy winning Kathryn, my friend."

"Seven years is a long time to try!" Chakotay bit out.

He felt Justin's hand on his in a gesture of solace. Again, like so many years ago, it felt as if a ghost breathed on his hand. Justin's eyes were a sharp, brilliant blue as they met his gaze. His shoulders were as broad, as muscular as Chakotay remembered from that night years ago. He had made a promise to Justin then, the instant connection that had sprung between the two men instilling trust in Chakotay, trust to fulfil Justin's dying wish.

"Did you teach – "

"Everything you told me that night, Justin. Kathryn has not forgotten you. It's to be understood. It's even admirable. I could sense how your passing had affected her, how she had sunk into depression afterwards. She told me that once, and her tone had been even, you know; she was relating the events as if they had happened to someone else. But I knew that Kathryn, in that voice, was the Kathryn who could successfully hide her deepest fears, her sorrows, her pain. Yes, I have tried. I was not there for her after you died, to share or lighten her burden. But those times on Voyager when she reached for me, I have been there, every single minute. She has despaired so many times, but has always been saved by her own magnificent obsession to protect her heart. I felt in those same minutes how she withdrew, turned into herself, afraid to let me carry her. I feel I've failed your memory, I've failed you. I love her…"

This time Justin's smile was almost tender, his eyes warm with forgotten memories of Kathryn.

"I know, Chakotay," he said. "Who could not love Kathryn Janeway the magnificent, the strong, the gentle, the compassionate, the caring woman? I chose you for a reason. Do you think I walked  accidentally into that tavern that night? I found someone - you, Chakotay - who could one day return the love Kathryn was capable of giving. She loves you."

"But?"

"She has always been afraid. How do you think I am still here, Chakotay? I've been watching over her - and you - and well, fifteen years is a long time to be restless."

This time Chakotay couldn't conceal a smile. He understood Justin. Why, it was only after he had himself come to terms with his heritage, his traditions and begged his father at the last to be forgiven, that he had seen Kolopak in his vision quests. Kolopak who had told him that he too, had been restless…

"And you, Chakotay, are afraid of being rebuffed."

Chakotay sighed resignedly. "It's why I've been holding back telling her of my feelings."

"I understand. I was pretty much the same. Kathryn, as I said, is not an easy person to love. It's not the calm water you see here in this cave, my friend, but the raging waves of the ocean as they crash against the shore…"

Chakotay's heart thundered. Justin's analogy was so accurate he wondered idly if they weren't cut from the same cloth.

"She loves you, Chakotay. Believe that."

"How?"

Justin moved away from him, off the platform, his white clad feet resting on the water. Then he held his hand towards Chakotay.

"You know there's a larger cavern beyond this one."

"I've always used breathing apparatus to swim through. It's a fifty metre tunnel from where you're standing."

"I want to show you something, Chakotay. Show you that there's hope. There's a hell of a lot of hope for you. Trust me?"

"In the other cavern?"

"You're much more astute than that, my friend. Of course, in the other cavern. You have to see something."

The thought of swimming for fifty metres underwater without breathing was a little appalling. Justin's words were reassuring though.

Chakotay nodded and took Justin's hand. He stepped of the platform, instantly going under. He held his breath as Justin dived down to the mouth of the tunnel. Already Chakotay felt a kind of swooning, his chest wanting to burst open. Justin squeezed his hand. The gesture calmed him. He followed Justin as his friend began to swim through the tunnel. It was pitch dark and the hand gripping his was the only indication that he was not alone. For about twenty metres, which felt like an eternity, they swam slowly. Chakotay became dizzy, his head seeming to fill with water. He was going to drown, he thought with alarm. He was swimming in the Great Xthipo cenote and he was going to drown. No one knew he was here… No one to look for him or to mourn him. No family, no friends, no Kathryn…

No one. Chakotay felt his grip loosening, his head wanting to burst from holding his breath. He became faint, faint.

His head filled with water. He was sinking, bursting, going…

A hand jerked his fingers hard, pulling him up.

The next moment he gasped as air filled his lungs.

He was standing on firm ground.

****** 

He frowned deeply. Firm ground was not ground, but a floor. The floor was… He looked around, puzzled. Where was the water? The Xthipo Cenote? A modern setting, clinical, grey and blue colours on the walls.

Voyager. The sick bay?

He glanced quickly at the man next to him.

"What…how?" he asked, perplexed.

"Look, Chakotay…" Justin said simply and nodded in the direction of the biobed.

Chakotay turned his gaze slowly, fixing it on the biobed.

A man lay there.

"I don't understand…" he murmured.

"Your Delta Flyer crashed, Chakotay. You were not the pilot, but…that's you on the bed."

"Yes…how…?"

"You've been in a coma for four days. Two of your crew died, unfortunately. You and Tom Paris were saved. Paris is on the bridge. But for you, Chakotay, time is running out."

"The EMH?"

"Can't do a thing. You're not fighting, my friend. Seems you've given up. In a few minutes it will all be over…"

Chakotay stared at his body on the biobed. The Great Xthipo Cenote was forgotten, the sense of drowning now placed in context. Had he left his body and found himself on another plane in the Alpha Quadrant? The man - he - lay on the bed and his face had begun to turn blue. There was no breathing and the stillness of the figure filled him with distress. Suddenly Chakotay knew why he wasn't fighting. He remembered nothing of any accident. Nothing at all. How had he found himself on the Yucatan? Why did his spirit lead him there?

"Because of all places in the universe, my friend, the Great Xthipo was where you always returned when you were deeply sad or disturbed about anything… When your father died, when your mother died, when all your friends died… Now, when you feel you've lost Kathryn…"

He nodded. Was Justin an angel of death?

"No, Chakotay. Just a good friend who wants to find peace."

 "You told me there's hope."

He couldn't take his eyes off the man - himself - on the bed. He couldn't remember the accident. Two crew had died, was what Justin told him. He had also given up, was what Justin told him. Given up loving Kathryn? If nothing else, that feeling, a part of his spirit standing outside of his body, was still a vibrant, throbbing part of him. He could feel it as a pulsing heartbeat, every beat sounding her name. He had loved her from the moment he saw her lying on the ice sheet on Tau Ceti Prime. From that moment on, nothing had come remotely close to the way he loved Kathryn. What he had with other women was transient, never in creation replacing what he felt for her. 

How had he reached the point of giving up?

"Watch, my good man. Observe."

"When I'm about to die?"

"Watch," Justin repeated.

The sick bay doors swished open. Chakotay glanced back and his heart gave a great lurch when Kathryn walked through, towards them.

"Kathryn…? Kathryn, I'm here. It's me, Chakotay."

He reached to touch her, but his hand went right through her. He remembered how she had once told him that he could not see or hear her when they'd crashed on that planet and how she had desperately wanted him to know she was alive... Kathryn looked exhausted, dispirited, desperate. He wanted to console her immediately, tell her she need not worry so.

"I'm here, Kathryn."

"She can't hear you, my friend."

He felt the desolation keenly as Kathryn moved towards the bed. She carried something, like a coat or jacket which she placed gently over Chakotay's body. The EMH appeared and spoke to Kathryn. There was compassion in his voice.

"He is dying, Captain. It will be minutes…"

They watched as Kathryn nodded, seating herself on the chair next to the bed. The coat or jacket looked vaguely familiar to Chakotay. He frowned, then it struck him. He had worn it the night he’d found her on the ice sheet and had wrapped her in it. After that he had completely forgotten about it. When already back on the USS Pendennis he had remembered, but had decided to leave it. He could always get another one.

"That - that's my - "

"Yes, the parka you were wearing that night her father and I died and you saved her life. She has kept it all these years, Chakotay, as a memory of the man who saved her. Admiral Finnegan told her that a Lieutenant Chakotay informed him of the crash and the medical personnel who treated her at the facility on Tau Ceti Prime simply told her that her rescuer had forgotten his parka."

"She has kept it all these years?" Chakotay repeated Justin's words. "All these years?"

"It has been her great secret. She has clung to it like, well, some little children cling to their favourite blankets. She knew that when she had to capture a former Starfleet officer by the name of Chakotay who had joined the Maquis, she'd bring the parka on the mission."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"It cannot be possible. Why did she never tell me about it? Why keep silent all these years?"

"Watch, Chakotay…"

Kathryn leaned forward in her chair and covered the hand of the dying man. Chakotay felt a sudden tingle as he lifted his hand to stare bewildered at it. Then he turned to look at Kathryn as she began to murmur something. Her voice was soft, loving. Loving. Her words…they sounded familiar.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light…"

They watched as Kathryn recited the entire poem. When she was finished, she sighed deeply and rested her head on her hand, the hand that covered his.

"Don't die, please…" they heard her plead. "Please live…for me. I need you…"

There was a long silence after that.

"She looks so exhausted, so lost."

"You have been lying there for four days, my friend. And sweet, brave, compassionate, caring Kathryn has been keeping a vigil almost non-stop. The EMH had her removed by Lieutenant Rollins and ordered her to rest."

"I love you, Chakotay…"

Oh, Kathryn…

"Go to her now, Chakotay. Rage against the dying of your light, my good friend. Rage. Fight it because she needs you…"

Chakotay looked at his friend, saw the kindly smile. Then he felt the same tingling of earlier when Kathryn's hand rested over the unconscious Chakotay's hand. It was the same sense of disembodiment he experienced in the tunnel. Justin moved further and further away. Or was it he himself who floated away? He looked at his hands, saw how they began to fade, how his feet began to fade, until… He looked distraught at Justin.

"You said I must fight, Justin. How?"

"You're doing it, Chakotay. You're doing it!"

************

Sounds echoing from a great distance gradually pierced the thick mists of his consciousness and became more distinct. At first it perplexed him, those sounds, for he could not recognise them, had no recollection of awareness that he should know them. Now he could hear her, even though he was trapped in the twilight world of unconsciousness. He heard her pleas, her words of love, the half forgotten words of a poem. He even felt the soft nestling of her face against his shoulder. Then something, like a furry blanket perhaps, descended on his chest.

He became aware of a hand holding his. A touch that evoked a memory, or a thousand memories? He knew the touch, knew it suddenly only as a great, magnificent desire of owning the colour, the softness, the awareness of affection of it. Had that always just been a wish, that a touch could convey love so great that his heart wanted to explode? The voice called to him, summoned him from the inky depths which held him prisoner. He wanted to go to that voice and experience the quality of it in the light.

Something began to swell in him, as if his chest was filling with air and expanding to an unbearable lightness. His breath was trapped inside him. Then when he couldn't hold his breath anymore, he gave a loud gasp, first exhaling then sucking in air as if his very life depended on it. He tried to move his head, to open his eyes, to lift his hand.

His mouth felt dry. His lips were parched. A swooning feeling as a sponge was pressed to his lips. He licked them, wanted more. Why was he feeling so damnably weak? Something weighed his eyelids down, he was sure of it. He moved his eyeballs, or tried to move them, but pain lanced right through his head. He gave a cry of pain.

A cold instrument against his neck. A hiss.

The pain was gone. A new lightness returned, and with it came the memories. Memories of a crash and the certainty that he had died. Accompanying that thought were the anguished moments before he lost consciousness that Kathryn was never going to know of his love.

A voice.

"Please…open your eyes, Chakotay…"

He tried, but what boulders weighed down his eyelids? A hand squeezed his, the softest butterfly touch, yet the message rushed to his brain, insinuating itself over muscles and nerves that controlled those boulders. He opened his eyes, a slow awakening, awareness of a darkened room that offered a benevolent coolness to the fire that had raged in him.

"Chakotay…"

Her voice.

He turned his head and looked straight into a pair of dark, sad eyes filled with cautious joy. He gazed at Kathryn.

Long.

Long.

He registered the brief flash of fear replaced by a new courage, a smile that grew into her face, a fearless caressing of his cheek with her free hand. He felt warm, his hand still held in hers like a lifeline, cocooned in an aura of peace.

"Kathryn…"

"If I lost you," she began in a trembling voice, "there would be nothing for me…nothing…"

What fire mingled with water in her eyes? He wanted to caress her cheeks and wipe away the wetness there. His too weak hand lifted, then slumped again, yet the strength of healing was already coursing through his body. Chakotay licked his lips. They were dry again. His voice sounded like a rusty croak.

"I - I was convinced that there was nothing for me… I lost hope. Forgive me… Then I..."

When Kathryn frowned gently, he pulled her hand closer and pressed his lips against it, rejoicing in his new strength.

"A good man taught me a great lesson," he whispered, "one which he told me to teach you, my love."

He paused, trying to organise his thoughts, to remember the Great Xthipo Cenote, standing in the cavern with its rainbow-lit stalagmites that looked to him like Dolls of the Dead, trying to remember, to picture Justin in his white nehru suit that radiated blinding white rays like an angel from the heavens. He tried to remember his conversation, how he told Justin that he had given up hope, that he had fought long and hard, how Justin pulled him through the water tunnel that brought him here, to Voyager, the sick bay. He tried to remember seeing Kathryn walking past them to sit by his side, how Justin told him that she kept a vigil by his bedside. He tried to remember the EMH telling her that he had only minutes left…

Kathryn sat up, an expectant look in her eyes. She frowned.

"W-What did he say…?" she asked.

"There is not a man alive who can promise not to die."

"That is what he told you? Who was this man, Chakotay?"

"He also told me that you will love me one day, for your capacity to love is as great as this universe. He was unselfish, kind, humorous, compassionate. Most of all, he wanted to make sure you would be alright. He - "

Kathryn's throat worked. She was close to tears. Her voice sounded thick with weeping.

"Justin? That man was Justin? How…?"

"Yes. That night on Tau Ceti Prime, I was sitting in a bar. Justin…he led me to the scene of the accident…"

He didn't have to tell her how Justin was a spirit, one who had wanted to make sure that Kathryn survived the accident on Tau Ceti Prime. Understanding was in her eyes, the way her face creased up.

Kathryn threw herself against him. He held her close as she sobbed gently, finally finding solace in her grief. When her tears subsided, she sat and gazed at him, a tender smile on her lips.

"Justin would have done that. It was so like him…to want to protect me."

"I fell in love with you that night. I didn't know you and you - you didn't - "

Kathryn nodded. "I was told by Admiral Finnegan." Kathryn gave a shrug. "I grieved for months. When I finally felt strong enough to search for my rescuer, you had gone. After that, I suppose, life happened."

"Too many things. Right up until the moment on the Liberty when I asked how you knew my name."

Kathryn smiled. The smile caressed him. The furry hood of the parka touched his chin. He realised that was what he’d felt in the moments after he surfaced from his dark hell. There was a burn in his chest, not the burn of pain, but of wonder that Kathryn had kept it all the years. He had forgotten about it, written it off as irrelevant. He nestled his chin against the hood of the jacket. Kathryn saw the action and her eyes became tender.

"I kept your parka. It - "

"Reminded you of the accident?"

"No, Chakotay. I felt connected to you through this parka. I didn't want to feel like that, you understand? I had just lost my father and Justin. It was too soon… Too soon. I had never laid eyes on my rescuer, yet I felt close to him. I wondered what he was like, not in appearance, but in nature. I decided that you must be strong, like Justin, and courageous like Justin, that you must be a warrior, a man who held fast to his beliefs, his principles, a man who would respect me… Yes, that was what I imagined you'd be like as a person. Then I met you, the renegade freedom fighter I was sent to capture. Every instinct I had about you, every dream, every imagining of your character…was so true… I fought it all these years because I was so afraid…"

"Kathryn…"

"What is it?"

"Are you afraid now?"

"No. But will you tell me one day where you dwelled, Chakotay? Will you tell me?"

He pulled her close to him again, the pain forgotten, the EMH snorting behind him.

"I will tell you everything you want to know. Everything about how a good man led me to you."

"Then I'll tell you how that good man led the right person to me."

She leaned into him, her eyes luminous, her intention clear and unafraid. He felt like drowning again, submerging in tons of water, swooning from the ecstasy as her lips brushed against his in a gentle caress. A sob escaped her when the kiss deepened. Later, sighing, she rested her head against his shoulder again.

"My love," she whispered.

There were many things they had to talk about, Chakotay knew. They had to talk about the accident, about the two crewmen who had died, how he had come to be rescued. They had to talk about a life together, on Voyager and one day, when they finally reached home. Chakotay revelled in the new warmth, the peace that flooded his being, Kathryn's whispered words of love, his own impassioned response that he wanted to give her the world.

"Kathryn?"

"Hmmm?"

"One day soon, when we're home, I want to show you the Great Xthipo Cenote in the Yucatan…"

"I'd like that, my love. I'd like it very much."

**************

Three men stood watching Kathryn and Chakotay. One wore an ice white nehru suit that radiated some kind of aura not from this realm. The other, older by many years, wore a wide brimmed hat of an indeterminate colour, probably between grey and brown. His hair was long and across his brow was the tattoo of the Rubber Tree People. His cheeks were grooved, the legacy of the dimples of his younger days. His eyes were kind, wise, his smile benevolent. The third man wore a long robe, tied at the waist by a silver cord.

"Now I can finally rest," said Justin Tighe to the other two.

"Yes, we've dallied about the Delta Quadrant long enough. They've finally got it together. We can go home now. My daughter is safe at last."

"I have been restless for many years. Now that my son has found peace, I have peace."

"Do you think we could be given time off to visit them sporadically?"

"I don't think so," said Kathryn's father. "It's their time now. No peeking."

"Just a little?"

"No," the two older men chorused.

They gazed one last time at the engrossed couple before one by one, they faded away…

END

Author's Note: The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico is known for its sinkholes. I've used a fictitious cenote [sinkhole] with an equally fictitious name.