The BLTS Archive- Where The Ocean Meets The Land
by august (appelsini@hotmail.com)

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cApril 1999

Disclaimers: This is trek. I don't own it, but with this new frequent
flyer programme . . . The title is taken from the Counting Crows song
'Round Here'.

As always, my mouth got me into trouble. This story is a result of my
saying 'Hell yeah I'll write a happy ending, if . . . ' Well, they did,
and so here I am. You need to read On a Beach to understand this. It won't
make sense otherwise.

For Sam. Who wrote a damn dead Janeway; who is a constant source of
inspiration, and a friend.

---

I suddenly feel claustrophobic underneath this jetty. I don't wait for
her, I walk out into the night air alone. It's chilly out there; I beamed
down only with my bathing suit. I call for a uniform to be transported
down.

"I told you that you would need a uniform, Commander." Kenny, the
transport operator jokes with me.

"I didn't think I would be staying this long." I murmured. I am aware that
she is watching me.

The uniform appears before me. I slip it on over my trunks. She is looking
at me with frank appraisal. It is unnerving.

And then we are standing in silence.

She begins to say something and then stops. Her fingers tap her comm
badge. "Janeway to Voyager. One to beam up." She does not look at me.

I am alone, on the beach. It has been five hours since I first beamed
down. I am at a loss for what to do. Everything seems to stretch before
me. The sea goes on forever, the sky is infinite. There is beach as far as
I can see.

I don't think I have ever felt smaller in my life.

I begin walking. Not that I want to go to the beach party, or that I want
to be anywhere in particular. I just don't have anywhere else to go. A
strange story I was told at the Academy comes to mind, of the Cadet who
was last seen walking to the ocean. In the story he never had a name . . .
or is the cousin of a friend . . . but he was always last seen walking
towards the sea. And his companions turn away for a moment: for a
conversation, for a drink, it's never said. But when they turn back he's
gone.

It's an urban legend, I'm pretty sure. Like the one about the guy in the
transporter accident; hands on his feet, feet on his hands. This story
that goes around for generations, and always begins 'My friend has a
 cousin . . .'

But sitting here, looking at this ocean, I am overwhelmed with this image.
I can imagine walking into the sea, never turning back. But I also know
what it's like to turn away for what seems like a second, and have your
whole world change. To have your world disappear.

Even though we've been here for five years, I still feel that way
sometimes. And sometimes I feel it about my world here. Things shift and
change so quickly. She changes. She changed.

I drop to the sand, and it shifts slightly underneath me. I feel like I'm
drunk; my mind is being assaulted with images of Kathryn beneath me and
Cadets walking into water and and and . . .

I wasn't angry, exactly. I didn't have any right to be, hell, I knew that.
I knew what she was offering, and what I was offering. It had just not
been how I imagined. Too many bad holodeck programmes, I suspect, that
always ended in simultaneous orgasms.

And Christ, I was not looking forward to tomorrow. I suppose I would
follow her lead. Denial and deference, that was the Janeway tune. I-

"Janeway to Chakotay." My comm badge chirped, and it was just as well. My
ramblings would have eventuated into bad renditions of twenty second
century show tunes. It always does.

"Chakotay here." I tried not to sound too . . . apprehensive.

"The computer says you're still on the beach. Can you stay there, please?
I'm beaming down."

I was still trying to formulate a reply when she materialized near me.

God, it was awkward. I noticed stupid things: she had showered and pulled
her hair back into a short pony-tail. She had the beginnings of a purple
mark on her neck. I guess that I had done that to her, I didn't remember.

We stared at each other. It must have only been three metres between us,
at the most. I felt like if I walked for two days, I still wouldn't breach
that distance.

"I'm sorry, about before." She said suddenly, stepping towards me. I
stared at her.

"For what?"

"For . . . that. I shouldn't have-"

"Kathryn, I didn't - you didn't exactly hear me protesting."

"It happens, sometimes you know. Warm bodies and all that."

"Mmm."

She hugged her arms across her body. "Will you walk with me, Chakotay?"

I nodded and we fell into step. It occurred to me that we had done a
similar things only a few hours before. But back then, my hand had been on
her back. Right now, I felt like if I touched her she would break. There
was a silence and a sadness that blanketed us.

I realised that I was still cold.

"It's not like we're virgins, Kathryn. It's not like it's the first time
either of us have had a fling, I'm guessing."

"But it was our first time." Ah Christ, she had me there. That she cared
enough to take notice of it, that she talked like there was the
possibility that there could be more . . .

We had reached the jetty again. I think we both realised it at the same
time and shrunk back. And then she stepped forward and walked over it. I
followed her down the long plank, the uneven boards moaning in protest as
our feet fell on them.

We sat at the end. If I had been a little taller, my feet would have
skimmed the water when I swung them. We both looked out onto the endless
water.

"Do you think . . . that someday . . . we could - it could . . . ?" She
doesn't finish the sentence. I was transfixed by a buoy in the distance,
disappearing and reappearing above the water-line.

"I don't know." I answer honestly.

I think she was expecting me to say yes. To scream yes, to be thrilled at
her question. I could have it wrong, of course, but I think that's what
she wanted. It hung awkwardly in the silence between us.

"I think that I'm afraid I'm going crazy, Chakotay." She says quietly, and
it's a different kind of honesty.

I turn to look at her, and for the first time she holds my gaze. Eye to
eye contact is a very intoxicating thing, and with Kathryn Janeway it's
something else.

"I'm doing and saying things in this Quadrant. . . it's not me. It's not
who I am. That - she motioned back to the jetty, "this afternoon, that
wasn't me. I didn't feel a thing, do you understand?"

"It's like you're on auto-pilot." I said, not specifically to her.

"I realised the other day, that this has changed me, Chakotay. Even if we
get home - in ten, fifteen years . . . it won't be the same. Things aren't
the same up here." She tapped her head. "I don't see things the same way."

"Maybe that's a good thing?"

She re-adjusted. "Sometimes I just don't see them."

I didn't know what to say to that, so we sat in silence again. It wasn't
awkward, it was just . . . silence.

"When you were in the Academy," I began, suddenly, "did you ever hear the
story of the Cadet who disappears in the water?"

She laughs, low and throaty. It makes me remember. "Oh yes Chakotay.
Everyone has heard that."

"Tonight, when I was sitting out here, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The definitive moment for so many people - for the Cadet, for his
friends."

"Chakotay, you're not thinking about . . .?" Her voice lingers off, and
for a moment I could let myself believe it was real concern in her voice.
I wave her question away.

"Of course not. But I was thinking I understand how the friends felt. To
turn away for a moment and lose it all." I hoped that she understood the
intent of my story. And by the measured gaze that fell on me, I guessed
she did.

"I don't want to lose you." She said, finally.

"I miss you, Kathryn." It wasn't an answer, or even an acknowledgement of
her statement. But it a reply.

"I know."

And she leaned her body against me. I lifted my arm and put it around her
shoulder. She was warm against me, and the whole action seemed twice as
erotic as undressing with her two hours earlier had.

The jetty shifted underneath our weight, and we sat in silence. The water
lapped at the shoreline slowly and quietly. She was feathered by the
moonlight, falling on her face. It was my backdrop. My definitive moment.
That was when we changed.

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The End