The BLTS Archive - Afterlife
by Your Cruise Director (cruisedirector@livejournal.com)

---

Paramount owns everything but the weird parts, which they wouldn't
want anyway. This is for Deborah, who promised to illustrate the story
upon hearing the premise. The mediocre characterization of the animal
guide is based on "The Cloud" and bears little resemblance to actual
Native American traditions.

---

The coffee wasn't helping. Neither was her habit of reading fuel
consumption reports just before turning in for the night. Yet she
suspected that neither of those foibles explained why her sleep was
tormented--nor why the dreams always ended with her desperate to get a
message to Chakotay, though she could never find him.

She'd been thinking about going to talk to him for several days. She
pretended that she didn't have time, but the real problem was that she
consciously had to make the time, then steel herself to buzz his door
one evening after dinner, when she was certain that he didn't have a
game of hoverball scheduled with B'Elanna and he wasn't on the
holodeck. Chakotay had been quieter than usual since his experience
with the former Borg--a combination of guilt and, she suspected,
regret at how easily they'd manipulated him. She told herself she felt
uncomfortable adding the burden of her disquiet to his own, but was
finally forced to admit that she was avoiding her first officer
because she was afraid of  upsetting the dangerous balance they'd been
negotiating ever since New Earth.

Sometimes she was furious with him for having so obviously fallen in
love with her, and making it so complicated for them to be friends and
colleagues. Other days, her knowledge of his feelings was the only
thing that kept her from crying herself to sleep. She wondered
uneasily what she owed him for that. She didn't want to mislead
Chakotay about her intentions, but she also didn't want him to think
that she didn't care about him--deeply. The simple truth was that she
needed a friend, badly, and she wanted it to be him. At this point it
seemed easier to open the can of worms by telling him so than to
continue to hold him at a distance.

"Captain," he said with surprise in his voice when he let her in,
though she was  certain he had asked the computer who was at the door
before opening it.

"Kathryn," she corrected him. "May I come in, Chakotay?"

He nodded and waved her through, his eyes flickering warmly, though
his  expression was concerned. "I take it you're not here on ship's
business,  Kathryn?"

"No, I'm not," she agreed. "Except inasmuch as my own mental state
concerns ship's business."

"Are you worried about something?"

"Other than the usual, you mean?" He nodded sympathetically; they'd
been over and over the supply problems, with no miraculous solutions
in sight. It wasn't easy for her to confess personal concerns, but she
couldn't afford to let them become debilitating. She knew he was
watching her fidget with her hands, and opted for  the direct
approach. "I've been having nightmares. Ever since the shuttle crash
when that alien almost killed me."

He sat down on his couch beside her and leaned forward to study the
circles she  could feel under her eyes. "Have you asked the Doctor
about it?"

"He did a quick check, but I don't think it's anything biochemical,"
she sighed. "What the alien made me experience has been making me
think about things, and I'm feeling...empty."

"You mean lonely?"

"That, too. But it doesn't just have to do with other people--it has
to do with me. How I see myself. I'm not sure what I believe anymore
about this life. Or my place in this universe."

"You're hurting in spirit," he guessed, and she smiled gratefully.

"I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole idea. And with coming to
you about it--I know it's been a long time since you introduced me to
your people's customs. You must think my interest was very shallow."

"Not at all..." he started to say, and she waved him silent, needing
to be frank with him so that he would be honest with her.

"I know I've been quick to take the scientific approach to problems,
and discount possible effects which are outside my own intellectual
beliefs." She paused, itching to pace the room, then forced herself to
be still, looking directly at her first officer. "And...I guess I
haven't always been a very good friend, either."

He blinked and looked quickly away, and her gut wrenched. She said his
name, apologetically, waiting for him to meet her eyes. He was silent
for a moment, opening and closing his mouth as he thought about what
to say; he took her fingers and squeezed them before clearing his
throat.

"You've been a very good friend, and a very good commanding officer,
and I know it isn't easy for you to separate those roles." She kept
his fingers in hers and managed a smile for him, though the contact
reminded her of that night on New Earth when he first told her of his
feelings; it gave her the shivers. "I'll help you in whatever way I
can."

She took a deep breath and blurted out, "I want to talk to my animal
guide."

His lips twitched, holding back amusement. "You don't need me to
contact your animal guide. You don't even need the akunah."

"I assumed as much. But I still want you there, like before."

He squeezed her hand again, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled,
obviously moved by her request. Again she felt guilty for not coming
to him sooner, asking for and offering the friendship which he
accepted gladly. He had never pressured her for anything more; she
made a mental note that she was going to have to think about why she
kept making the romantic potential between them an issue when he was
content to let it be.

Shaking herself, she forced her mind back to the topic at hand. "I
don't have much experience with trances, and the last time I entered
one, to save Kes' life in that Nikani portal, I discovered that I have
all sorts of expectations I don't know how to work around. I'd feel
better if you were in the room--for the ship, and for me."

"All right." He let go of her and crossed the room to get his medicine
bundle while she slid off the couch onto the floor, her back against
the cushions. "Want some tea first?" he asked as he passed by the
replicator.

"No, thanks."

"Mind if I get some?"

"Of course not." She folded her arms over her knees, willing herself
to relax. Chakotay brought the tea and the bundle and sat beside her,
his hip touching hers. The black feather, the stone--this one appeared
to have new markings. When lifted her hand to place it on the akunah,
she was afflicted with deja vu--from that first encounter in her ready
room, but also a sense that this wasn't the last time they would sit
together like this.

"I should have done this a long time ago," she admitted in a whisper.
"But I was afraid."

"Was your animal guide large and toothy?" He was teasing, but his eyes
were sad. "At least you didn't try to kill it."

"Did B'Elanna really do that?"

"She certainly did. I was surprised--resistant people sometimes can't
even find their animal guides on their first attempt. B'Elanna met
hers right away, but then got so angry that I thought it must be an
overly affectionate poodle or something...I shouldn't laugh. It was a
difficult situation for both of us. What scared you last time?" he
asked abruptly.

"Nothing from the vision. It was like you said--peaceful, and
comforting." She tried to remember exactly how she had felt that day:
intrigued when he had first told her on the bridge about his people's
traditions, startled by his eagerness when he bounded into her ready
room with his medicine bundle. It had been a little uncomfortable when
he led her to the low table and took her hand to give her the
equivalent of a psychoactive drug. And then blissful...floating away
with  the sound of his voice to that place of peace and joy, aware of
him even when she couldn't see him. She'd felt guilty when Torres
interrupted, not just for neglecting her duty, but because the
intimacy with her irst officer had been unsettling; she explained
herself rather gruffly to B'Elanna before she stopped to think that
Chakotay might be offended at her casually discussing what they'd been
doing.

She'd sent Kim to him later to talk about animal guides. But after
that evening playing pool with the junior officers, which proved
relaxing in a different way--it was the first time she could remember
flirting directly with Chakotay and being aware of doing so--she'd put
the experience out of her mind. He did not offer again, and she had
been uneasy about asking.

No longer. She gritted her teeth to tell him the truth: "I was afraid
of getting close to you like this."

He met her gaze, unsmiling. "Kathryn, I would never use my traditions
to take advantage of you in any way. Not personally, not
professionally, not even to challenge your beliefs."

"I know. I never thought you would. It was me I was worried about."
His eyes widened, and then he nodded once. "Can we start?" she asked,
to move past the moment.

"If you're ready." He smiled reassuringly and lowered her hand onto
the akunah. "Akoocheemoya, we are far from the sacred places of our
ancestors..."

---

She was back on the beach watching the sun set even before he finished
speaking the sacred words, feeling the breeze against her face. She'd
thought about taking him here, the night she invited him to go sailing
with her after he'd saved her life, but it was so personal, so much a
part of her--she'd known what it would mean to bring him to this
place, even on a holodeck. She'd never even come here with Mark. Lake
George had been safer.

She looked around for the little lizard, but it wasn't immediately
evident, so she sat back and watched the sky for a few minutes.
Sunsets on New Earth had looked almost like this. In fact, the scene
had changed from the last time she entered this idealized landscape:
several elements from New Earth had crept into the fauna.

It was painful for her to admit how much she missed that planet. The
entire time she had been there, she had tried to repress how
pleasurable it was to live under an open sky, exploring geology and
botany instead of the cosmos. She'd told herself she didn't want to
think too much about Voyager because it would make her homesick, but
the truth had been that she didn't want to admit how happy she
was--working with the soil, eating fresh fruit, lying in a bathtub
under the stars, knowing that Chakotay was inside the shelter, waiting
for her. If he'd thanked  her for showing him the true meaning of
peace, then she owed him for this, her own inner sanctum.

A movement in the corner of her eye made her jump. The gecko was
perched on a log, watching her.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to come back." She heard herself
speaking aloud, and wondered whether Chakotay could hear her; he had
been able to hear her questions to him the last time while she was in
the trance state. No matter if he overheard now; she trusted him with
whatever she had come here to learn. But she felt rather tentative
about direct communication with a reptile. "Many things have happened
to me," she told her animal guide.

The little lizard cocked its head at her, looking as if it expected
her to feed it. She burst out laughing at the thought, realizing with
some embarrassment that she couldn't offer anything to her animal
guide: she didn't think it would want to be petted. "Why do you watch
over me, anyway?" she asked. "Did you choose me, or did I choose you,
somehow?" It stopped to regard its own tail for a moment, then looked
at her expectantly, waiting.

"I'm afraid of dying," she burst out. The lizard opened its mouth and
bobbed its head, and she realized with chagrin that it was laughing at
her. Maybe it didn't believe in the finality of death, and thought her
terribly silly to be concerned about such a thing. "Well, of course,
it's not that simple. I have been ready to give my life for my crew.
But I'm troubled by bad dreams about my father, and the alien who
pretended he was my father, and about Chakotay not being able to save
me. I think about my crew going on without me--or not able to go on
without me.  I'm afraid of dying without having finished living this
life," she said softly.

*What will you do about that?*

The question startled her; she wasn't sure whether it had come from
her own mind or from the creature. "I was hoping you could tell me.
Can't you...give me guidance? Remind me of the things I might regret
if I don't take the time to think about them? She wished she'd asked
Chakotay more about the role of the animal guide--how much it was at
liberty to say to her. This wasn't much like talking to a ship's
counselor. "Can't you at least help me ask the right questions?"

Infuriatingly, the creature darted under the log, out of her sight.
Despite the tranquility of the warm wind, she felt herself growing
frustrated. If only there were some way to bring Chakotay here with
her. Or someone else who could answer her questions...

She heard a sound behind her on the beach, and turned. Face to face
with--herself.

Not herself, she realized almost immediately. There was a difference,
shocking in its clarity, though she recognized the woman facing her
despite the lack of mirror reversal. This was her other self--the one
who had come onto her ship from the duplicate Voyager, the one who had
died when that Voyager exploded, taking a Vidiian ship with it. She
wore her old hairstyle, but it was primarily instinct rather than
evidence which told her that this was the woman who had exhorted her
from the viewscreen to get her ship home. Herself until their lives
diverged.

There must be hundreds such selves, she realized. Different timelines,
different universes. A Kathryn who had never gotten lost in the Delta
Quadrant, and had gone home after her three-week mission, with her
Maquis captives or without. A Kathryn who'd ended up a on Chakotay's
ship, rather than the reverse. A Kathryn who'd chosen not to save the
Ocampa, who'd gone home following the incident with the Caretaker, and
found that she couldn't go back to her old life--to Starfleet  and
Mark. A Kathryn who never returned from Old Earth, who'd gotten stuck
in the 20th century along with her crew.

In another universe, this duplicate Kathryn would have lived, and she
herself would have died. Victim of the Vidiians, or of her own
self-destruct order. Two of the ship, two of her, from the other side.
She felt the same oddness as during that earlier incident talking to
her double in engineering...the sense that, while she could predict
this woman's actions and answers, she wasn't certain she knew her.

Am I always so serious? she wondered, looking at her companion's
unsmiling face, framed by the bun she'd given up wearing. The face of
a scientist, the face of a starship captain. Not necessarily the face
of a friend. She'd had the same thought the last time they'd met--not
a lack of trust, but a recognition of her own stubbornness and blind
spots, a combination of fear and an unwillingness to examine too
closely. This time she was determined to get closer.

"Kathryn?" she asked the other, awkwardly, and was surprised at her
own smile on someone else's face. Her breath caught. The expression
transformed her, lighting her eyes, taking years away from her
features. *I have to remember to smile more often.*

"I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again," the other Kathryn was saying.
"You're always so--scientific, and this is a spiritual plane we meet
on."

"*I'm* always so scientific?" she demanded. "Not *we*'re always so
scientific?"

"I've been different since I died," the other raised an eyebrow
mysteriously, and they both grinned.

"I needed to see you." She felt foolish saying the words to herself.
"I've had questions..."

"I know. And there are things you can confide in me which you don't
think you can tell anyone else."

"You say that as if it's criticism," she heard defensiveness in her
voice.

"Not criticism. I see from a different perspective now." The other
moved  differently too. Despite the uniform she wore, there was no
trace of Starfleet demeanor; the other seemed completely relaxed, arms
dangling free at her sides. Wherever she had come from, she seemed
happy.

"Then...there is an afterlife?"

"D you really doubt it? We told Harry Kim that what we don't know
about death is far greater than what we do know." Her double was
smiling again. "I didn't realize how much I believed that until I
died. You believe it too, but you've been hurt, so you're not letting
yourself trust."

"Then you know about what happened to me? With the alien who pretended
to be our father?"

The other sighed in momentary frustration. "I don't know what you
felt, no. I don't share your experiences from the moment we separated
any more than you shared my death. Why don't you tell me about it?"

They walked along the beach as she talked, describing the events as
they had unfolded: the shuttle crash, Chakotay saving her, the
Vidiians, the time loop. The shuttle exploding, the Doctor's
treachery, the finality of her death seen from a distance, her father,
her funeral. Letting Kes walk through her, not being able to contact
Tuvok. Reaching out to a crew which was already letting her go, not
wanting to believe that they could go on without her--not willing to
let them. Chakotay holding her in his arms, crying. Vanquishing the
alien, inviting him on the boat.

"You had a busy day," her double said dryly. "But I'm not sure how
that last figures into the problem."

"'Boat ride' is sort of an understatement. 'Midnight sail' is what I
said to him." Her twin raised an eyebrow. "He did save my life. And,
um, he gave me a flower."

Up shot the other brow, half her mouth curling to the side. "I see."
She was alarmed to note that her face did a lousy job of hiding when
she was amused. She wondered for a moment if her other self might envy
her the life she'd lost, but her face was peaceful; wherever she
existed now, it apparently fulfilled her. Recognizing the need to put
her own false postmortem experiences into context, she began to
describe her life from the moment when it had diverged from the other
Kathryn's. It was easiest to work backwards, to the common point of
experience. The abortive trip to Earth's past...the loss of the ship
temporarily to the Kazon...Seska, the baby...New Earth. The bathtub,
the monkey, the river, the storm, the night after the storm. Then the
communicator signal, putting on the uniforms, coming back to the ship.

The other Kathryn listened silently for the most part, nodding
understanding. Finally she asked, "Why didn't you talk to him about
what happened to you?"

"To Chakotay? How could I? I don't even know how much of what I
witnessed during the hallucinations was real. Not his reaction, not
even my own response. How am I  supposed to ask him whether I really
saw him crying over me?"

"He'd answer you." Her companion shook her head slowly. "No matter
what the details were, do you have any doubt of his feelings?"

No, she almost said, before realizing that that wasn't completely
true--and that that was part of the problem. "Of course. Aren't there
always doubts?" She felt herself becoming flushed, angry at her other
self and at Chakotay. "He's never said anything that couldn't be
misinterpreted," she said carefully. "I think he does it deliberately,
he doesn't say--the big words. Maybe he doesn't feel things as
deeply..."

"...as you obviously want to believe that he does, or that alien
wouldn't have given you the hallucinations you had," the counterpart
Kathryn finished easily. "I know. I thought the same things, until I
died."

That refrain was getting a little tiresome. "Was it different
afterwards? Were you in some place where you knew everything, and all
secrets were revealed?"

"No." The other smiled, embarrassed. "I set the auto-destruct for five
minutes. The bridge was mostly empty, everyone was fighting the
Vidiians. We had time to kill. He told me."

She didn't know why that should shock her, but the words sent a thrill
through her body, anticipation and something akin to jealousy. Aloud
she said, "It was disturbing, to learn that, of anything I might have
been thinking about when I died, I wanted to see him mourn me--the
alien wouldn't have shown me that, otherwise, would he? I didn't even
think about Mother, or Mark." Whirling, she stopped walking and put
her arm on her double's. "What were you thinking about, when you
died?"

Her other self turned away from her, shaking her head the way she
sometimes did to make herself stop thinking an embarrassing or painful
thought. She realized that she could actually feel her arm on the
other woman's--not just the pressure of the skin under her fingers,
but the grip of someone else's hand on her own arm. She jerked away.

"Is that where he got it from? I was picking up your thoughts, from
when you died? And you're projecting your physical feelings onto me
now?"

"I'm not projecting anything, Kathryn. I don't have the same kind of
corporeal sensation that you do. But there are resonances between us.
That physical feeling's one of them. What I was thinking when I died
might be another."

Not at all pleased at the thought that her own emotions could be
manipulated by some other Kathryn in some other universe, she
demanded, "Then tell me what happened."

"When I gave the self-destruct order, there were things which had to
be done to distract me for the first minute--systems shutdowns to make
sure the Vidiians wouldn't be able to override, that kind of work. I
was thinking about Tom and B'Elanna--how they must have died--and
Harry running through the corridors to get to your ship. I was
nervous. Wondering whether we would feel anything before we
dematerialized, and if it would hurt--I guess everyone thinks about
that. I tried  not to think too much about anything other than the
fact that the Vidiians weren't going to get us, and they weren't going
to get you, either."

The other Kathryn took a deep breath. "Those were the first two
minutes. Then--I panicked, for a few seconds. I didn't want to die. I
wasn't even sure it mattered if the bridge crew heard me cry at that
point--we were all going to be dead in a few more seconds, did it
matter if I wasn't acting like the captain at the end? He must have
sensed something, because he turned right then, when I was about to
fall apart. He said my name. He'd never done that before."

She nodded. Until she'd told Chakotay to call her Kathryn on that
first day of their exile, he had never called her anything but
Captain. There had been times when she thought he might--when she
ordered him to let the ship blow up with her aboard, when they'd
entered the cargo bay together to see which of their crew had elected
to stay with the 37s--but he never had. She tried to imagine what it
would have been like, at the last moment of her life.

Her counterpart was shaking her head, eyes closed, continuing. "Well,
it did distract me from worrying about dying. I knew what he was
trying to tell me--what he was going to tell me, if I let him. And, I
realized that, since I knew what he was going to say, I'd known before
how he felt. I couldn't help thinking, what if our lives weren't going
to end in less than two minutes--if he'd said something
straightforward to me while we still had a chance. Probably I was only
letting myself think about it because he and I were both going to die.
But at that moment, I stopped and let myself think how I felt about
him. And I knew I'd  known that before, too."

They were both silent, walking, for several beats. The sky was
changing colors, the sun beginning to sink below the horizon. She was
achingly uncomfortable with this confession out of her own mouth. "But
you can't be sure--you might have been feeling what you were feeling
because you were going to die, not in spite of it."

"Oh, I know that," the other readily agreed. "I wondered, before the
Vidiians came onto the bridge, what I would tell you, if I could talk
to you once more. Whether I would tell you not to let yourself and him
slip past one another--or whether that was one thing I shouldn't tell
you, since you still had your life to live."

She stopped to pick up a stone, rubbed the markings on its face.
Indelible. It reminded her of Chakotay's stone, the one in the
medicine bundle. Abruptly she remembered the stone she'd seen earlier,
briefly, when he took out the akunah--the new one. A stone from the
river. It was all too easy to guess which river it had come from. The
one they'd never gotten to explore, on the boat ride they hadn't
taken.

"I guess you decided what to tell me, if you're telling me this now."

"No, Kathryn. You decided." She saw her own smile again on her
counterpart's face. "This is your vision, not mine. Given that there
are infinite universes, there must be a reason that you picked me of
all Kathryn Janeways to converse with."

"I didn't pick you. My animal guide said..."

"...that I might be able to answer your questions. This self, this
time. Why do you think that is?"

"Because you know what it's like to die," she realized. "And--you know
what it's like to die with Chakotay." She hesitated. "But there have
been other complications between us since he saved me from that
alien."

"Since you saved yourself," she was corrected. "Like what?"

"Well, for one thing, there was another woman..."

She stopped. That wasn't what she had intended to say. She meant to
tell her other self about the Borg collective, her realization of how
much Chakotay needed to belong to someone, someplace--how that had
scared her, that weakness. Standing in Sickbay, hearing herself talk
in the same condescending voice she used to comfort distraught
ensigns--"Helping others, Chakotay, that's part of who you are"--not
certain she believed the altruism. She'd been dispassionate reading
his report on Riley (and he'd spared no detail), seeing a man not
himself, injured  and under the influence of alien mind control, not
unlike herself possessed by the Bothans. She had not condemned
him--not for sharing physical pleasure with a woman who could
insinuate her own desires directly into his mind. Her anger had
stemmed from his muddled loyalties to the ship. Even if he was
directly under the control of the Borg neurotransmitter when he stood
in the conference room, pleading for Riley, avoiding her own eyes, he
had not been able to put Voyager's  interests first. That was what she
blamed him for, not for a fling with a woman who in the end had not
hesitated to use him for her own purposes, no matter how much that
might have hurt him...

The other Kathryn had stopped and was watching her from the corner of
her eye, waiting. Arms crossed defensively over her chest. "It wasn't
what that sounded like," she amended. "It's not like he went looking
for someone else--though there's no reason why he shouldn't have, I've
never given him any indication that I want him to wait. I wanted him
to get past it. So we could be friends at least."

"Aren't you friends?"

"It's so hard, worrying that I'm hurting him--I didn't want him to
feel this way, I wish I could treat this like any other crew crush. I
need him too much for this as my first officer."

"But you're the one who's been keeping your distance from him."

"I know that." Stricken, she felt tears spring to her eyes. "I don't
know why I'm taking this personally at all."

"Yes, you do. What are you going to do about it?"

She had no answer. The obvious choice--to admit how the whole incident
had made her feel--was fraught with danger, for the ship as well as
for both of them. If he'd balked at an order to let her go down with
the ship months ago, what would happen if she gave him any
indication...

"He loves you anyway," her other self said, reading her mind. "That's
not the real problem, is it?"

Of course it wasn't. The real problem was that she loved him. Not just
him, either. B'Elanna, Tuvok, Tom, Kes. All of them. She didn't think
she could bear to lose another crewmember. The ground rushed up to
her--no, she was collapsing in the grass, burying her face in her
hands. Too much responsibility. No way to go on either side.

"Tell me that they all live after they die. That they find peace, same
as you. All these lives--the best I can do isn't going to save them--"

"Can't you forgive yourself a little, Kathryn?"

So strange and so painful, to hear her own voice, the condescending
tone she herself used with recalcitrant crewmembers, coming out of her
own mouth, but directed at herself. To see her flaws undistorted by
the mirror, the features reversed, as if they were somehow confronting
her. She looked up into her own face, blurred by her tears.

"We're scientists, remember? You're supposed to seek the truth." She
almost envied her dead self the knowledge she could not yet reach, the
certainty that what waited was not the terror held out by that alien
pretending to be their father, but the place Chakotay believed in,
where he had met his own father and changed the course of his own
destiny. Her double looked at her with a mixture of exasperation and
affection, as though she were a child.

"Can't you at least love yourself a little?"

She looked at the woman, her self as an alien, staring back at her.
Not really any more predictable than anyone else she knew.
Understanding, but essentially foreign, a different skin, with a
little of her parents and grandparents mixed in, expressions she'd
picked up from her teachers, a gesture every now and then that
reminded her of a friend.

Everyone she had ever cared about in her life was here, in this one
person who was not wholly herself.

"I can love you," she said.

Her duplicate reached out and stroked her face, across her cheek. She
was shaken, dazed. Without conscious thought, she did the same--traced
her fingers across the identical cheekbone, watched eyes like her own
close in pleasure at the contact. She could feel echoes of her fingers
on the other's face against her own skin.

This must be what it was like for Chakotay in the link with Riley, she
thought, and felt no rancor. So compelling, to touch oneself through
another's hand. She could tell from the look in the eyes which
mirrored hers that her twin knew exactly what she was feeling.

"I'm sorry--" She jolted back, humiliated. "This isn't like me." But
the other eyes held no condemnation, just curiosity.

"No?" Amusement, reflected to her in her own voice. "Last time I saw
you, you used to touch people all the time. Which one of us do you
want to hold responsible now?" Blushing, she turned away, but there
was no point in lying to herself--either of herselves. She'd never met
anyone who'd understood her so thoroughly, instantly, without censure.

"Is any of this real?"

"Does it feel real?"

"Yes, but you could be just as much a figment of my imagination as
those alien illusions. What's my body doing right now?"

"I imagine sitting on the floor in Chakotay's quarters, and he's
driving himself crazy trying to figure out the expression on your
face." Her double smiled slyly.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this," she managed.

The other laughed, a wild, free sound which she hadn't heard from her
own lips since...probably since New Earth, when Chakotay was teasing
her about the bathtub. "You have more answers inside of you than you
think you do, Kathryn. But you can't always find them yourself--not
with science or all your training, not even asking your animal guide."
The deceased Kathryn sounded like her guide from the Nikani. "Let me
tell you something. When you're really dead, you realize that all the
restrictions you put on yourself stem from timidity, not strength.
Things you deny yourself, you don't get a second chance to try again.
Stop backing away from asking the questions you really want to ask.
Starship captains don't give in easily to fear, remember?"

She felt as if she were falling, the world contracting to the two of
them until she couldn't tell where one of them ended and the other
began. The sky darkened, the ground fading like a holodeck program
turned off, nothing remaining but the participants. "Believe in this,
Kathryn," her self said to her. She lifted her arms and threw her head
back, and for a moment looked like she was out of focus--as if
hundreds, even thousands of other Kathryn Janeways were superimposed
on this one, so bright that it was difficult to look at her. The image
rose, all the  trappings of her rank and role falling away--she was
naked, and glorious, a self perfected. The multiple Kathryns smiled,
then walked straight through Captain Janeway of the starship Voyager,
just as Captain Janeway had done to Kes when she thought she was dead
in an alien vision.

For a split second, she was all those Kathryn Janeways. She could see
all the consequences of every choice she'd ever made, going back to
her early childhood, she was in direct contact with all the women she
could have become. The joy was overwhelming, even after the light
became too bright for her eyes, and then everything went dark.

When she could see again, she was on the beach, it was night, and she
was alone.

Not quite alone. The little lizard was beside her.

"What the hell was that all about?" she demanded, puzzled and slightly
embarrassed.

Slowly, deliberately, the creature followed its own tail in a circle.

She shook her head, shifting uncomfortably. "Well, there must be a
reason. She told me I have more answers inside me than I think I do.
But then why was I here with myself, if I can't get the answers out of
myself? Or even out of you?"

Her animal guide cocked its head expectantly, then began to retreat.

"Then what am I doing here at all?" She was going to have to complain
to Chakotay about this animal guide business. Not only was it
unscientific, it operated in the kinds of circles that gave her a
headache. The lizard was laughing again. "I don't know where else I
can look for answers..."

She stopped.

"Because I can't get them while I'm here at all," she realized
abruptly. "That whole time, I was trying to tell myself..."

---

She opened her eyes to find herself sitting on Chakotay's floor, where
he stared with an expression of wide-eyed wonder on his face.

"How long..." she finally managed to ask.

"A few minutes--less than five, I think. I got worried about you at
the end--you were trembling. Did you find your animal guide?"

"Yes." Belatedly she felt herself flushing, her body responding to the
adrenaline surging through her. He studied her face as she evaded his
eyes. "It wasn't what I was expecting, though."

"Did you get answers? About your nightmares?"

"I'm not sure." She stretched her legs out in front of her, trying to
calm down. "Can I ask you some questions?"

"Of course. Just give me a minute." He got up and went over to the
replicator, bringing more tea for himself and some for her.

She sipped quietly, trying to think where to start. "Do you really
believe that the dead can speak to the living? You can contact the
spirits of your ancestors and they're really there, not just in your
own mind?"

"I'm not sure." She watched him lift his head to regard the medicine
wheel on the wall. "I was raised to believe that, yes. I've had
experiences which I can't explain, in scientific terms, and I believe
in their validity. But I don't have a clear mental picture of the
afterlife, either."

"That alien...the one who almost killed me. He did everything I'd
heard people experience in near-death encounters. He looked and talked
like my father, he tried to make me accept my death. I watched
everyone letting me go. Even you--you resisted it the most. Chakotay,
if you believed I was dead, would you try to contact me in the next
life?"

"I don't know." His face was dark, troubled.

"'I'm not sure' and 'I don't know' aren't the most comforting answers
I can think of."

He refused to meet her half-smile. "I have a feeling that if you died,
I wouldn't be able to meditate at all. It would take all my energy
just to put on a front for the crew. If I let myself try to contact
you, if I had any sense that you were out there, waiting for me..."

"Yes?" she prodded quietly.

"I'd never be able to let go," he finished. "I wouldn't want to wait
to join you. Kathryn, I can't imagine going on without you right now,
I can't imagine this ship without you." He turned his face away. "I
know, I'm the first officer, and this is not what you want to hear me
say. But it's the truth. If you died, I would have to find some way to
let you go quickly, or I might never truly be able to be Voyager's
captain. I've been trying to find some way to let go as it is--I  know
that's what you want, so it doesn't ever come to pass..."

She was silent for a long time, unable to speak or even to drink the
tea, digesting what he'd said. Wondering whether the burden of her own
feelings would seem greater or lessened if she took on his as well.
Remembering what her double had told her about herself and Chakotay,
in the timeline where they died together.

"Some days...I want to wake up and find out that our lives these past
months were all a dream, and I'm still living on New Earth with you."
His exhaled exclamation sounded a little too much like a sob, and she
held up her hand to make sure he would let her finish. "I feel so
guilty, Chakotay. I don't want to leave Voyager, even when things are
going badly and I think we'll never get home--I realized that when
Culluh took the ship. But I wish I could find a way to keep more of
what we had on that planet right here, for both of us."

His hands were half-held out to her, awkwardly, as though he wanted to
embrace her but wasn't sure she'd let him, yet he couldn't completely
hold the impulse back. She reached out to him, felt his arms go around
her and his chin come down over her head, keeping the side of her face
pressed against his neck. "Sometimes I think it would be easier if
there were two of you," he was saying. "The captain of Voyager, and
the person I shared my life with those weeks. But I can't separate
them, and neither can you. When I met you, you were a starship
captain-- not even being stranded without a ship could change
that--but that wasn't all you were, and I don't want it to become all
you are."

"I don't know how to be any other me," she said ruefully.

"I remember the first time I told you about animal guides--you were
concerned that you weren't close enough to the crew, you wanted to
join people on the holodeck. I was so happy to realize that you were
that kind of captain--that you weren't going to shut yourself up in
your ready room. That you'd be part of the crew. But you changed."

"I thought it was a mistake," she whispered, moving back a little. He
let her; they both needed distance to have this conversation. "When
Durst died, and Bandara, and Hogan--I started to realize that it was
too dangerous for me to be so involved with any of the crew."

He let out a breath, hard. "I'm glad to hear you say that. Not because
I agree--I think you're wrong. But I thought maybe it was something
I'd done."

"Something you'd done? I don't understand."

He looked away from her, then rose and paced to the viewport. looking
out at the stars. "I realized...I thought you must have known how I
felt about you. And that I never should have let you see, since you
seemed to take that as a reason to start isolating yourself, and
avoiding friendships with people serving under you. It was even worse
after New Earth--I couldn't even get you to talk to me--"

"I'm sorry." She couldn't speak for several seconds, realizing how
deeply she must have hurt him--not as a rebuffed lover, but as her
friend and first officer, who blamed himself for her isolation and the
effect it had on herself and the ship. "It wasn't ever you, Chakotay.
It was almost losing the ship, twice, because of Dreadnought and then
because of Seska. And what almost happened to Harry. And Tuvix. I had
to balance the responsibility..."

She choked up again, felt him come back across the room, sit beside
her. "It's me," she admitted finally. "I could have to order anyone on
this crew to his or her death at any time. Even you--I've watched you
refuse to let me die, twice, and I can't afford to feel the same way."

"Is it so much easier to let go now?" he asked gently. She flinched at
the honest response in her mind. "Can I tell you something I learned
from that Borg collective? It's very seductive, that sort of
closeness. You feel like the other people are a part of you, you're
not sure how you lived without that sort of communication. When I
left, I wanted to bring them with me--even though the neural link
would be severed, I still felt like they were a part of me, and I
wanted to hold on to that connection. A real community. It felt...a
lot like love." She turned her head sharply. "I even thought about
asking if I could stay with them when I realized Riley wouldn't come
with me. But I couldn't do that,  any more than they could go. I
couldn't leave this ship. Or, to the point, I couldn't leave you. That
would have been cutting out a bigger part of myself than I lost when I
lost the connection to them."

She understood the feeling all too well. It was how she felt about
him, and every single person on the ship. That conflict--she couldn't
afford to let herself connect for fear of losing the connection and
becoming incomplete. Yet she was incomplete without it as well.

"I saw myself in my vision," she whispered to him. "The me from the
other Voyager, from the accident which duplicated the ship."

"That is interesting. Two of you. Was she sorry about what happened?"

"Not at all. She looked more comfortable than I've felt in a long
time."

"Did she make you feel split apart?"

"No." She smiled. "She made me feel whole. She kept trying to tell me
that I'm complete, I have the answers within me. But I can't find them
myself."

"What did she think you should do about that?"

"She thought I should ask you." He blinked in surprise. "What do you
think I should do?"

He looked torn--wavering between what he wanted and what he thought
was right, not certain whether there was a difference. "I think I
might have to consult with *my* animal guide before I answer that
one," he said ruefully, and she laughed.

"Can I ask you something else?"

"Go ahead."

"Are all the things we see in trances symbolic of something, or just
random archetypes?"

"I'm not sure what you mean." He lifted his mug to his mouth as he
waited for her to explain. She took a deep breath and concentrated on
the far wall with the medicine wheel.

"Does it mean anything in particular if you see yourself naked in a
vision?"

She heard him try to choke back his drink before spluttering it all
over the table, watched his hand quaver as he set the mug down,
sloshing tea everywhere. "I, uh...I'm sorry," he was laughing
helplessly. "Um, my tradition is based on the balance of the elements
and the power of nature. I would say that if you were naked in your
vision...that is, in general, nudity in a trance might have something
to do with not hiding from oneself. I guess it could be an indication
that the seeker needs closer contact with noncorporeal things instead
of material ones. Spiritual instead of physical matter."

"She looked pretty physical to me." Her tone was nonchalant, though
she felt her face turning scarlet. But Chakotay didn't notice, because
he had buried his head in both hands and was practically howling.

"Stop. Now *I'm* going to have visions of this for months. I think
next time you enter a trance, you definitely need to take me with you.
Please." They were both chuckling, avoiding one another's eyes, but it
was comfortable embarrassment. He straightened slightly beside her,
glanced at her as if he needed to make sure they could stop grinning
before he spoke again. "OK. Seriously? Maybe it means that you need
more direct interaction with your own feelings. Or your animal guide."

"I asked my animal guide about it. He laughed at me."

"Not really?"

"He certainly did."

Chakotay grinned again, then shook his head slightly. "Kathryn...this
isn't something you're going to solve in one night. I still have
nightmares about things which happened to me in the Maquis four years
ago. But I know what I think you should do."

"What's that?"

"Stop trying to work all this out yourself. Tonight, well, you're
probably tired from that vision, but right now I think you should go
to the holodeck. Even if they're running that awful beach resort, just
long enough to say hello. It's different than participating in talent
night or tennis matches if you just drop by to be friendly. Just to
make contact."

She nodded. "And you think that will chase my nightmares away?"

His grin was unrestrained. "If not, I could try a purification ritual
to chase them out of your bed. I might have to stay with you all
night, though..."

They were laughing as she swatted at him and he hauled her to her feet
so they could head together for the door.

--

The End