IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, Janeway, Chakotay.
EPILOGUE
Chakotay gave a sigh of relief as he entered the cool lounge of their Indiana farmhouse. There were just too many people today at their annual reunion. Voyager crew and their spouses, their children and their cats and dogs, if it came to that. Missy had followed him inside. Chakotay rubbed the dog's head. Missy was getting old now and her movements slower than the exuberant setter who adopted him the first time he set foot in Indiana.
He stared out the window. Kathryn was in her element. She smiled, greeted, laughed, talked, touched someone on the shoulder here or the head of a child there. He had met them all, had spent half the morning entertaining them with food and the exchange of gifts.
He saw Elizabeth running around with Miral Torres and Jamie Hamilton, eight year old son of Mariah. They had become great friends since the first reunion with Kathryn at his side. It had been hard that first year, for both of them. Still suspicious of Kathryn were those crew who believed her guilty and still suspicious were Kathryn's friends who had beaten him up, sent him to hell and cursed him for his thoughtlessness. Dalby and Ayala had unexpectedly sided with Kathryn on Voyager. In retrospect, he was glad that she did have crew who believed in her.
"You're throwing away the finest woman I know," Dalby barked at him. "Treating her like dirt."
He had walked with a cracked jaw for two days untended, never eating until he had been forced to see the EMH.
They had been that angry. Now most of them had changed towards her. They could see how close Kathryn and Elizabeth were as mother and daughter. Kathryn's love was open, unvarnished, clear for everyone to see. Those, like him, who had been at the forefront of condemning her, could witness that love, making them finally realise that they had been wrong. No one spoke of Sarah Hargreaves, although Kathryn, generous as always, traced her eventually and invited her to spend a few days with them. She was simply Sarah to Elizabeth who saw her as nothing more than a former crewman of Voyager. Elizabeth was equally unaffected in her love for her mother. She still kept all the gifts that Kathryn had received for her baby shower on Voyager. They went together on excursions, shopping trips, exhibitions, concerts. Kathryn tutored her in science while Grandma Gretchen opened the world of mathematics to the child's eager young mind. He was there too, telling her tales of warriors and legends, which so enthralled her.
Their daughter thrived as a balanced young child in the care of her loving parents.
Many times he still grappled with what he almost threw away.
Now he sighed, just wanting to rest and be alone with Kathryn later when everyone had gone. After almost eight years of marriage, he remained awed at her generosity of spirit, was more in love with her than ever before. He had spent time in their company but after patting heads of children, talking to Tom, B'Elanna, Dalby and Ayala, and a few others, he hastened inside, finding refuge in the lounge with only Missy as company.
A hand slipped into his and he closed his eyes at the touch of it.
"Why are you inside, Daddy?"
"Sometimes, I just need to be a little bit alone, okay? I'll join them again in a few minutes."
"Me too. When are we going to Dorvan?"
"In two weeks. School vacation and a whole month after that – altogether two months."
"Am I going to visit the habak again this year, Daddy?"
Chakotay kept his eyes on the crowd outside, their figures receding into remembrance as he turned to face the child. Then he smiled. When he married Kathryn eight years ago, he never thought that they would be blessed with another miracle. Neither did Kathryn, for that matter. Her medical history made miracles impossible, that's what they believed.
They had been on Dorvan for their annual vacation. Kathryn was waiting outside their abode as he walked back from the habak. He sensed instantly that something was wrong. He sprinted the last few metres to reach her side, breathless with anxiety. The same fear was there, the one he never recognised on Voyager.
"K-Kathryn," he stammered as he reached her and pulled her into his embrace. "Honey, what is the matter?"
"I – we are pregnant, Chakotay."
He hadn't waited. They made their goodbyes to his sister and two cousins and hastened back to Earth where Voyager's EMH examined Kathryn extensively. They had not used boosters. Kathryn had been convinced she would never fall pregnant again after Elizabeth. Now, her fear surfaced all over again and he realised how terrifying it must have been when she fell pregnant with Elizabeth. She had told him about the Cardassians in an emotionless voice that recounted the horror of their torture, their callous rape and impregnation and now she was reliving the terror of those months again.
It struck them with force, and in the midst of the reliving of her horror, the EMH and Doctor Paris waged a battle on another front to save this child too, for Kathryn – he berated himself a thousand times again – was going to miscarry. He had never listened to her the first time when she did want to tell him about their first child. Their son wasn't going to survive and Kathryn had been near hysteria again. When he had managed after many weeks to calm Kathryn to a point where she finally realised that they would do everything in their power to let her carry her baby to at least seven months, she calmed down.
Elizabeth Paris, Tom's mother, had been a miracle counsellor, guiding Kathryn through her trauma. Once, Owen Paris had stopped by and spoke with them. His voice had been kind, full of understanding and the gentle caution that they had to think of their child now. What happened was terrible, but it was over.
And so Kathryn lay in the twenty fourth century version of traction, almost similar to what Neelix endured when the Vidiians harvested his lungs. And Kathryn had gone through trauma of a different kind. The long hours lying still, on her back, interminable months of immobility made her crazy. Then the storm of tears when she felt their son kick for the first time, her regret of never having carried Elizabeth to term. He had been at his most patient, been harassed mercilessly; he swore by the spirits that Kathryn tested his endurance to the very limits.
"Didn't you promise to be by my side forever?"
"But Kathryn, getting leeola strawberries is impossible."
"Nonsense, if it has seeds, it can grow. But do bring me some, please?"
And Kathryn's eyes would go all watery and his heart would crumble and dissolve in those watery eyes.
"And no, don't replicate them."
How long did leeola strawberries take to grow? He had enlisted Neelix's help and called on Noah Lessing who was serving on Voyager under Magnus Rollins to create something resembling strawberries with leeola in the hydroponics bay there. When he finally had a bowl of what resembled leeola strawberries, Kathryn didn't want it anymore, saying she'd love a cheese sandwich with sand. She had been impossible to handle. Almost. He could understand her frustration having to lie still and wait until their son was born. He was faced with what other husbands endured in their partners – the impossible and unbelievable demands of unnatural cravings during pregnancy. And poor Elizabeth became just as cranky as her mother, crying at the oddest and most inopportune times, or being just clingy the entire day, or on others just lying with her mother on the high bed and massaging her mother's stomach.
But their son was growing and Kathryn was blossoming.
"It's the most wonderful feeling, the way he kicks. I don't mind if he kicks all night and never rests, Chakotay. He's alive! Isn't it wonderful?"
And then the unexpected depression when Kathryn would rail at all Cardassians and doctors, refuse to eat or co-operate with Doctors Paris and Robert. Plunged into the depths of despair, it brought home to him how little he understood her plight on Voyager.
Then Kathryn became ill again. They feared for her life and that of her unborn child. Again they considered a surrogate. Kathryn's condition worsened just at the thought of losing her baby, or someone carrying the child.
"So help me, God, Chakotay. If you let them transport my baby out of here, I will kill you, I swear."
They battled. They prayed. Her parents, her friends, former crew of Voyager who heard that she was to give birth and that there were complications. Kathryn would have died just proving to everyone that this time she wanted to do the right thing or, to do the thing the right way. Kathryn came out of it. At seven months, when both doctors concurred that it was safe for baby to be born, they induced labour.
It had been difficult for everyone to remain unaffected. He had held his baby son to him, with Kathryn's hand never far from touching the baby. His heart burst. They cried together. A miracle happened.
"Daddy…?"
Chakotay, brought back from his reverie, looked into the eyes of his son. If he hoped that his son might look like him, Kathryn confounded him in that too. Kolopak Neill Janeway was a boy version of Elizabeth. They had the same colour hair, the eyes, and although both children had a light tan, in every respect they physically resembled their mother.
He had wondered if there was nothing of him in their children. But both children had surprised him.
"Daddy?" Kolopak tugged at his shirt.
"Yes, son?"
"Will I see Grandpa Kolopak in my vision quest again?"
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It was quiet after the crew and their families left and Kathryn and Elizabeth entered the lounge where Chakotay and Kolopak were seated on the couch. Earlier, when they had seen most of the visitors off, Chakotay had been withdrawn, though he displayed great friendliness when Dalby ribbed him, or Ayala gave him a few chuckles. Marla had given him a hug. Magnus was still in deep space, but James, his son from a previous marriage and now a young Starfleet lieutenant had shaken his hand. James thought the world of Chakotay who had taught him Advanced Tactical at the Academy. He had been a strapping young fourteen year old when they returned home and when his father married Marla, promptly called her Mom, "because I never had one since I was three" he told her once.
All the time she had kept an eye on Chakotay while they greeted, hugged, kissed the little children, shook hands with the teens. He wanted to retreat and at the earliest opportunity had vanished into the house. She smiled gently. Every time they came, or in moments when they were extra close, Chakotay had been overwhelmed. They loved him as much as they now loved her. She sighed. It was too soon perhaps to tell him of her conversation with Sarah Hargreaves, but she had forgiven the young woman. It was Chakotay who found her compassion still hard to bear, still at times cried out his unworthiness.
They had two wonderful, well-adjusted children who looked like her but who took after him. She didn't mind it one bit. Both children had had the great, rare privilege as children, to have experienced visions in the habak on Dorvan, Elizabeth seeing her great-grandfather and Kolopak seeing Chakotay's father.
But the haunted look was on his face. She sighed.
It was time she brought her husband back from the abyss again.
"Elizabeth, honey, take Kolopak outside, will you?" she said.
"Yes, Mom," she replied, walking up to her brother. "Come, we're going to pick some tomatoes for Mommy."
"Really?"
"No, but we can pretend."
Kathryn smiled indulgently when they left. She sat down next to her husband and laced her fingers through his. They sat a few seconds in silence.
"You're quiet," she said.
He pulled her gently into his embrace.
"I drown in your compassion, Kathryn."
"You gave me back my life."
There was a pause.
"I read a poem, from long, long ago. The words struck me, because it echoed everything in my heart in those days. Do you realise that…everything that happened to us, the forces that drove us apart, the forces that brought us together…happened during – "
"Winter…"
"Yes."
"Do you know the poem?" she asked. It always ended like this. Her heart overflowed with great humility. He had written it down and the first time he had read it to her was the day they married. Chakotay fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the faded piece of paper and began to read the first lines:
In the bleak
midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago…
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