Carried With Me All These Years
 

I always thought it would be me. Never let it sink in until now, when she stands before me in a pose I know so well, that the future I want will not be lived by me. God forbid I should try to compete with a woman twenty-six years younger than myself, even if I was her, once upon a time. I hold out the gift.

"For you. Take it. I. . . won't be needing it anymore."

Her hands shake as she reaches out a hand nervously. Thinks I'm trying to trick her. Her eyes never leave my face as her fingers fumble with the tissue paper I wrapped it in. She stares down at the object in her hands. I think I have finally convinced her that I am who I claim to be. Her voice, when it comes, is small and shaky.

"When was it taken?"

"A year from now. I took it.It was Seven's birthday and Chakotay and I arranged a secret party. I don't think I've ever seen her this happy."

"She's beautiful."

"I know."

Silence descends. She has spent too long hiding her feelings that she can barely bring herself to speak of them, even to me. "Now I believe you. No-one else would give me this, would know that I'd even want it. I've never told anyone. I can't even put it in my logs, I couldn't stand the shame. . . "

". . . if anyone found out."

Our eyes meet.Finally, someone who understands. The mutual release is palpable. I understand how much my gift means to her in a way that no -one else ever can. I carried that picture with me for years. It is old now, faded with age, incongruous in a timeline in which it has not yet been taken. It was the first thing I unpacked when we finally reached Earth, and her face is the first thing I lay eyes on every morning, the last thing I see when I close them to sleep. But even behind my eyelids the image still lingers. A clinging russet dress caressing her curves, hair falling about her shoulders and a shy smile lighting up her face as she looks up at the camera. A delicate gold necklace is wrapped around her throat, a gift from Chakotay, one I always thought looked rather like an animal's collar. But I am bitter, that's no surprise. I kept the picture in the drawer by my bed, too frightened to place it where I once kept the picture of Mark. As if anyone would ever see it there, as if anyone other than me had ever gone into my bedroom since I stepped on board Voyager. If you don't count Q, that is, and quite frankly who would? Even those visits tailed off when the gentle touch of time aged me as it never did him. But always, hidden beneath my nightgown and lingerie, lay a picture of Seven of Nine, her shining eyes on the camera, smiling at the photographer with an expression I didn't recognise until it was too late. . .

Blue-grey eyes roam the figure sensuously, lost in some private erotic dream I have no doubt had countless times. Reluctantly, Kathryn lifts her gaze, looking around the room for the best place to put it. She moves to the bedroom and I follow instinctively, knowing where she's headed. Beneath layers of filmy gauze and satin she places the picture, her thumb grazing Seven's face for a moment before she closes the draw. She looks up into my smile. "You put it there too?"

"Where else?"

She smiles, sadly. "Seems appropriate." She stands, awkwardly, unable to look at me. "You must hate me."

"Why? I was you once too."

"And you threw all this away. Everything you. . . we could have had. We threw it away."

I cup her face in my hands and force her eyes to meet mine. "Not anymore." And I'm lying. Because I never will have my second chance. By the time I'm gone, by the time the Captain calls Seven in to talk, I will never have existed and Seven will only carry a vague, discomfiting memory of an old woman who said she came from the future and warned her about what was to come. I will not be the one to make it up to her, all these years of pretence and loneliness. Nearly thirty years and not a whisper, not to anyone. My younger self can barely comprehend the strength of will it took. And yet she understands far more than she thinks.

"How did you. . . how could you? All those years and you never said anything?"

"The same way you've spent the last seven years alone. The same way you pushed her away again and again, every time she got close, but never close enough to see that the chink in your armour was her."

My voice is raised and I'm shaking with emotions too numerous to name. I force them under control with a will of iron that would rival even that of the woman in front of me. "Truth be told, Kathryn, I've been angry at myself for a very long time."

I'm angry now. That and bitter, horribly, horribly bitter. I never realised until now how stupid I'd been, how careless. The strain of not breaking down in front of my � her - crew has been too much to bear. I challenged Seven with what I had seen in her future, and still only implied what I was too damn scared to just come out and say. My voice caught in my throat as I looked at this beautiful ghost and told her that she would die withina matter of years. She turned away, giving me privacy to shed my tears and pushed a soft silk object into my hand. A vague memory stirs in my brain � didn't I give her that handkerchief, one evening years ago as she struggled to hide her tears in front of her Commanding Officer?

I brushed it across my eyes, catching her scent on the silk and catching my breath in my throat as memories flooded back. I finger the material in my pocket nervously, a talisman against the stubbornness of the woman I once was and still am somewhere deep down inside, against the destiny that I know awaits me in the form of an old enemy who inadvertently gave me one of my closest friends. I will meet a painful, lonely death for this woman. To give her the chance that I threw away time after time after time. This Kathryn has her whole life ahead of her. I can't begrudge her that, it's what I'm here for after all. But if I can finally get her to understand what I found out too late, maybe at least one of us can be happy. How much this picture means to me. . . she must see why, she can't be as stubborn as that. How anyone could look at it and not want to sweep up that beautiful, fragile woman into an embrace and never let her go. .

And if she does. . . will she think of me one day, cradled in her lover's arms and wish I knew how happy she is? I'm glad I won't know. I couldn't stand it. To have her and yet not have her. I'm going back, changing everything, but seeing them talk and touch brings back all my old feelings again. When my jealousy for Chakotay filled me, made me sick with grief at what I was missing, what I had let slip through my fingers. Beside her every night in what became their marriage bed, whilst all I had was a picture hidden shamefully away in a drawer that I allowed my fingers to trace each night before I could sleep. And now, no matter how innocent their conversations, no matter how trivial or banal their exchanges, no matter that the repression I maintained for so long is still in check. . .

I envy Captain Janeway and hate her. She is me, but she isn't. I will never experience what she will, never know how it feels to let that long, silky blonde hair brush against my skin without turning away. One day, perhaps in the not so distant future, soft, full lips will press against a duplicate of mine, this Kathryn's hands will trail across her skin, her back, fingertips massaging full, creamy breasts and hard pink nipples. And the irrational hurt lingers that it will not be my hands that elicit gasps of pleasure from the woman I love. That this ecstasy is always going to be something I will never know. It's strange. I carried her picture with me all these years but nothing quite prepared me for the sight of the woman I loved and mourned standing before me. Or the envy. That it is my younger self, and not I, who has the chance of this future ahead of her. All I have wanted for so long, everything I've worked for. . . and I'm not going to reap the benefits.

When I left Earth, I stood the picture by the console, a reminder of why I was here. I could do with it now, as my nerve begins to fail, but the fleeting, uncertain presence of the living Seven works better than any image.

After Seven left the Flyer, the Captain stayed a while. We sat, mostly in silence. I think she understood. And then I was alone, and for the last time pressed the handkerchief to my nose and inhaled Seven's sweet perfume.

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The End