The BLTS Archive - No Forgiveness
by Aislinn Carter (Kara669@aol.com)

---

Kathryn stared out the viewport as Voyager flew at high warp
back to the hub. She sighed, looking back down at her cup of
tea. //Maybe I should just go for it,// she thought wryly.
//Pretty soon, I won't exist. Might as well enjoy myself. A
cup of coffee isn't going to do much damage at this point.//

But she sipped at the lukewarm tea, pushing thoughts of her
former vice out of her mind. The stars sped by – or rather,
Voyager sped past them. . . or maybe they sped past each other,
was that how it worked? – as Kathryn contemplated her
actions. Why the time police or whatever they were calling
themselves nowadays hadn't showed up was beyond her, but she
had come to the shaky conclusion that maybe her timeline
wasn't supposed to have existed in the first place. It was a
comforting thought when held up to her actions. . . it almost
absolved her of guilt.

Admiral Kathryn Janeway. . . throwing away a timeline to suit her
own needs.

She was sick.

The Doctor had told her as much, four months ago. A
psychosis brought on by a dormant virus in her cerebral
cortex. She hadn't let him get much more out than that, but
she wondered if it was the virus from New Earth. Wouldn't
that be poetic?

She had wiped his knowledge of the psychosis. She couldn't
have him committing her to Starfleet Psych and ruining all
her plans.

She had so many plans.

Kathryn realized that she had been unconsciously playing
with the chain under her neckline. Pulling it out of the top
of her uniform, she opened the tiny locket and sighed at the
picture within. "He was supposed to be mine. . . " she whispered.
"I won't let him go again."

//"Did you send her on that mission on purpose?"

Kathryn looked up, startled. A figure stood in the shadows
of her quarters. . . she didn't have to see him to know who he
was. "How did you get in here?" She hadn't even heard the
doors open.

"I've been sitting here as long as you've been in here.
Watching you."

"I've been here for twenty minutes."

"I know."

She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse. He had
been. . . irrational, over the past two weeks. She didn't blame
him, of course. She had been waiting for this confrontation.

"Why don't you come out of the shadows and sit down." She
said harshly. "And stop sneaking around."

Chakotay came into the light, his handsome face twisted by
anger and grief. "Sneaking around? You mean like you've been
doing?"

"What are you talking about?"

In one fluid motion he was in front of her, pulling her up
by her arms, his hands in a vice-like grip on her shoulders.
She was barely able to gasp before he began shaking her.

"You know what I'm talking about!" he hissed. "You didn't
want me, but you couldn't let anyone else have me!"

Kathryn gripped his waist with her hands and kneed him,
succeeding only in planting her knee in his thigh. They
struggled for a moment before she broke free of his grasp
and smacked her fist into his jaw. Incensed, he reached out
for her again, before she kicked out and swept his feet out
from under him. She straddled him, holding his arms above
his head as they glared at each other.

"I won't report this to security, Chakotay, although clearly
you belong in the brig. But I know you're in mourning, so
I'm going to let it slide. This time."

"Oh, aren't you just the saintly Captain Janeway." Chakotay
wrenched his hands out of her grasp and pushed her off of
him, causing her to tumble to the floor. She stood up as he
brushed past her, stopping in front of the viewport and
smacking his hand on the bulkhead. "You couldn't just let me
be happy, could you? You had to make me just as miserable as
you."

"I sent Seven on an away mission the same way I would send
anyone else," Kathryn said hotly. "I'm insulted you would
think otherwise."

"You took her from me."

Kathryn, after three years of keeping her feelings to
herself and smiling and nodding and pretending, finally
exploded. "You took each other from me!" she screamed. "You
both got what you deserved."

The statement hung in the air. Kathryn, mortified that her
true feelings were revealed not only to Chakotay but to
herself, stood in shock with her hand over her mouth.
Slowly, Chakotay turned to her, his eyes wide with
disbelief.

"What?" he whispered.

She lowered her hand, "You both took away two of my closest
friends," she whispered. "I don't have Tuvok anymore. I
don't have anyone. You were my best friend and she was. . . "

"She was your project," Chakotay spat out at her. "And I was
your lapdog!"

"No!" She shouted. "You don't know me at all! She was my
friend, too. She was the closest thing I had to a child of
my own. And that's what she was, Chakotay, a child!"

"And for that she deserved to die?"

"I didn't kill her! I didn't want her to die! I wanted to
turn back time and stop you from ever laying a hand on her,
from ever speaking a word to her. But I never wanted her
dead," Kathryn finished tearfully. "I loved her. You think
you're the only one mourning her? I loved her longer than
you did. I didn't just lose you to her, I lost her to you."

He stared at her. "You've barely spoken to either of us
outside of our duties in three years. Your hatred is not
unknown."

"I hated the circumstances. . . not the players."

"You hate me," he said scornfully. "Don't lie and pretend
otherwise."

"I do hate you!" she shouted. "The only people – the only
people – on this ship who I could feel free to almost be
myself around were you, Tuvok and Seven. You took up with
her to punish me!"

"For what?"

"For not loving you!"

His face looked stricken. "I knew you didn't love me," he
said quietly. "But you don't have to rub it in."

"You said you would always take my burden. You lied. You
made my burden greater."

"You remember that?" he said, surprised.

"Of course I do," she edged closer to him. "I didn't know
Seven was going to die. I never would have sent her if I
had. I wish you would know that."

The anger seamed to leak out of him at her forlorn
expression. He sighed. "Maybe we should sit down. . . and speak
our minds, for once. I don't think we have anything to lose
at this point."

She nodded after a moment's thought, and they sat at
opposite ends of the couch. He rubbed a hand over his face
and began to speak without looking at her. "Three years ago,
you found out I was seeing Seven."

"You couldn't even tell me yourself," she said harshly. "I
had to find out from overhearing Lieutenant Chapman and
Crewman Peters."

"I'm sorry for that. I should have talked to you, and I
didn't. It was my mistake," he hesitated. "I knew the moment
you knew. Your face. . . your eyes, they changed. You shut off.
You would avoid us. You shut yourself off, Tuvok being your
only companion. Then he got sick."

Kathryn's eyes welled up with tears as she thought of her
old friend, now confined to quarters, ranting and raving in
his own world. "And then I had no one."

"You chose to close us out. Seven and I didn't want our
friendships with you to end."

She stared at him in amazement. "You thought I could be
friends with you while you were with her?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Why couldn't you?" he asked, his
voice dangerously low. "Come on. Give me the reason."

Her hands trembled in her lap. She recalled his words. . . they
really had nothing to lose at this point. "I always
thought," she said, looking down. "That when we got home,
you and I. . . you and I could be together."

"I know you thought that. I could tell."

"Then why couldn't you wait?" she whispered.

"You gave me nothing in all these years. You gave me no
reason to wait. Was the occasional hug or kiss too much to
ask? A loving word every now and then? An affirmation that I
wasn't waiting in vain?"

"As captain I. . . "

"As captain you had an obligation to your crew to be their
friend, to show them that you're human. You can't spend
decades with people and not show them who you are. It's
rude. Being with me would have shown them you were human and
showed them they were free to be happy, as well. You set a
terrible example, Kathryn."

The tears spilled down her cheeks. It was the first time he
had called her by her name in years.

"I'm so lonely," she choked out.

"It's the way you've made yourself."

She stared down. "Maybe a part of me did hope something
would happen to her," she said softly. "Maybe I did hate
her."

He was quiet for a moment. "Should I forgive you?"

Her head snapped up. "I can never really forgive you."

He stood up. "Then I guess we have nothing else to say. I
didn't wait and I won't wait again. My wife, my future, is
dead. You can't know my pain."

She waited until he was nearly to the door. "You never loved
her. . . the way you loved me."

He stood there, stock still. Then he left.//

Kathryn chuckled as she remembered that particular scene.
Maybe she hadn't purposely sent Seven to her death, but she
couldn't pretend it wasn't a relief not to have to watch
them play the happy couple anymore. She knew Chakotay wasn't
blissfully happy, and she sometimes thought perhaps Seven
wasn't either. But they were content with each other. And
they certainly didn't mind showing it.

And then Seven was dead. And Kathryn didn't have to deal
with it anymore.

No, she just had to deal with Chakotay, the manic
depressive.

His moods became erratic. Half the time he was perfectly
civil, other times he would argue with her in front of the
crew. Several more times he became violent with her, but she
never reported it. He couldn't stand to be around her, yet
he couldn't stay away. It became so that she expected him to
be lurking in the shadows of her quarters, to hurl
accusations at her along with him begging her to love him.
The years passed, and they became lovers, as she always half
expected they would, but it was an angry sort of passion.
Nights spent hissing insults at each other as they tore at
each other became the norm. He never stayed the night, and
she never wanted him to. They hated each other, and yet,
they were obsessed with each other.

If the crew knew, they never indicated it. In the last years
of their journey, there was a shift in their relationship.
It started innocently enough. One night he didn't insult her
as they. . . well, it couldn't be called making love, that was
for sure. Then another night, he kissed her tenderly.
Without meaning to, they fell into a routine of reviewing
crew reports together, the way they had once upon a time.
Seven had been dead for years by then. She had been dead for
far longer than she had even been aboard the ship. Wounds
had healed, but the bitterness remained. Their relationship
improved, but could never truly move forward. And she could
never forgive him, anyway. He hadn't waited. He had stolen
her friends from her. There could be no forgiveness. Only
angry passion and quiet companionship.

And he never really forgave her.

Some nights, he would taunt her, telling her about the
children he imagined he and Seven would have had, about the
life Kathryn had stolen from him. "My future," he said
softly into her ear as he led a trail of fire down her body
with his hands. "You murdered my future, and now I have no
one. I don't love you anymore, Kathryn, I hate you."

"Nooooo. . . " she breathed. "You don't."

And he never corrected her.

So here she sat, all these years later and all those years
before, sitting in the guest quarters that would someday
belong to one of the Kesellian refugees who would join the
voyage...these were Danden's quarters, weren't they? Well,
in any case, they weren't her quarters. This wasn't where
she belonged, but it was where she had to be.

She tucked the locket containing his picture back under her
neckline as she heard the door chime. "Come."

Her heart jumped into her throat as Chakotay entered. She
had worked with him since her arrival, of course, but had
taken great pains to make sure she wasn't alone with him.
She doubted he noticed. He wasn't noticing the Captain
Janeway from his own time, let alone a future version. She
had nearly thrown up when she saw him and Seven smiling at
each other during a briefing yesterday. It was sickening. He
was acting like an adolescent.

"Commander," she said, pasting a fake smile on her face.
"What can I do for you?"

//"Feel like having lunch?"

"I'd love to, but I've already made plans. Rain check?"

"Absolutely."//

Kathryn felt sick to remember that conversation, now that
she knew who he'd really made plans with that day. //Love to,
my ass,// she thought bitterly. //And me with that big grin on
my face. Absolutely. Ugh.//

He looked uncomfortable. "I wondered if I might speak to you
for a moment."

"If my memory serves me correctly, you haven't spoken all
that much to Captain Janeway recently, so why would you want
to speak to any version of her?"

She mentally kicked herself for letting that slip. The look
on his face told her he wasn't going to let that one go.

"I wanted to talk to you about the future. Nothing
specific. . . there are a few things I need to know."

//In for a penny//. . .  "What is it, Chakotay? You want to know if
there's any hope for you and your captain, so that you can
feel free to pursue your little Borgette? Feel free. You
have my permission. I insist."

His mouthed dropped open and his expression was one of utter
shock. "You. . . you know about Seven?"

She stared at him in disgust. "I'm from the //future.// I swear,
sometimes I wonder how you get your boots on in the morning
without someone assisting you."

His face reddened. "I don't know why you're so hostile to
me, Admiral. . . "

"No, you wouldn't know."

". . . But I came here hoping to have an adult conversation. . . "

"I'm sure, considering that's something an emotional
adolescent like Seven can't possibly provide."

"That's enough." Chakotay said sharply.

"Don't speak to me like that, I outrank you."

He shook his head in confusion. "Kathryn. . . "

"No," she said. "I think we both know I'm no longer Kathryn
to you."

He was silent, staring at her. "I must have hurt you very
badly."

"That's an understatement. But we hurt each other. We spend
the next sixteen years at each other's throats. Both on the
bridge. . . and in the bedroom."

His jaw well and truly dropped at that comment.
"Bed-bedroom?" he stammered.

Kathryn waved her hand. "Oh, don't read too much into it.
It's never anything but hate sex, really. We never have the
happily ever after either of us ever dreamed of. You gave up
first." She leaned forward. "Chakotay, even if you get back
tomorrow, I don't know that I want you anywhere near her.
You spell nothing but heartache for her, Chakotay. You are
her undoing. Stick to your Barbie doll and leave Kathryn to
live her own life."

"I wasn't going to. . . "

"You will."

"I am seeing Seven of Nine," Chakotay said harshly. "The
fact that you know that leads me to believe the relationship
will be successful. I've committed myself to her. If you
know anything about me – and I would think that you do –
you'll know that I honor my commitments."

"You will get home and you will toss Seven aside for
Kathryn. You say I know you. You're right. You'll destroy
both of them."

"Wait. . . you said we become lovers."

Kathryn snorted. "Such a pretty term for something so ugly."

He frowned. "Se. . . Seven and I don't last?"

"Seven dies," Kathryn said bluntly, no longer caring about
revealing a timeline that wouldn't exist now. "Three years
from now. You'll be married to her by then, and you will
spend the rest of your life blaming me. You'll always love
me, Chakotay, but you'll hate me all the same."

He had paled, his golden skin ashen now. "Why would I blame
you? Did you. . . "

She shrugged. "Maybe, deep inside, I sent her on that away
mission hoping she wouldn't come back. But there was no
indication that anything out of the ordinary would occur. I
think I just hoped on every away mission she went on that
she wouldn't come back. We lost another crew member as well
that day, but I wasn't allowed to focus on anything except
your precious Seven. I couldn't even comfort Nao-" Kathryn
cut off, her mouth snapping shut. Chakotay titled his head
and his eyes widened.

"Naomi?" he asked quietly. "Was it Samantha who died that
day?"

"Yes," Kathryn snapped. "But you made such a scene on a
daily basis that all anyone could focus on was you and
Seven. You made it all about you, Chakotay. I don't think
you ever took the time to talk to Naomi. She was a young
girl, a teenager in appearance but still just a child at
heart. After Samantha died, she had nothing. Oh, everyone
was there for her, there's no doubt of that. I tried to be a
mother to her. . . maybe we were somehow using each other to
replace what we lost, I don't know. I had lost Seven, who
for so long was like my daughter, until you selfishly took
that from me." Kathryn sighed. "Naomi was twenty-two years
old when we made it home. Her father. . . they had spoken over
the years, of course, but they didn't know each other and
never would. She didn't even have him give her away at her
wedding. . . she had Tom do it." She smiled at Chakotay's look of
surprise. "Yes, Naomi got married. She married Icheb. They
have a little girl. I don't know what will happen now,
whether or not they'll still end up together, but I have to
believe that two people who loved each other as much as they
did have to be able to find their way to one another," she
sighed. "We were really all she had. . . you hurt her terribly
when you ignored her after her mother's death. She never
really forgave you for that."

He squirmed, having the grace to look embarrassed. "I can't
apologize for actions I haven't taken yet. But now that I
know, I will endeavor to make sure I don't make the same
mistakes."

"I hope so. You acted like you were the only one who had
ever lost someone. It was amazing. You could lose nearly
your entire family and go on with your life, and yet this
loss, of this woman who wasn't even the love of your life
and who you hadn't even known a decade, this loss unraveled
you. I half thought she must have reprogrammed your brain to
make you act like that."

Chakotay stopped short of saying whatever he was about to
say, a look of sheer horror dawning on his face. "Could she
do that?" he whispered.

Kathryn smirked. She had forgotten his deep set fear of
being assimilated. How he ended up with a Borg, she'd never
know.

"No, I don't think so. But you never recovered from her
death. And that wasn't like you. You're not the kind of
person to sink into your own grief like that. That's more my
MO. "

"Maybe it was just the last straw. . . after everything I had
already lost."

"Maybe," she agreed softly. "But it's something that will
never happen now. Once Voyager gets home, things will be
different."

"Have you told her? Or. . . Kathryn?"

"I haven't told either of them," she said quietly. "I will
if I have to. . . to use as leverage if the captain decides to do
something stupid. But otherwise, I'll keep it to myself,"
she looked him in the eye. "And so should you. If I do
decide to tell one of them, and they bring it up, act like
it's the first you're hearing of it. Otherwise, keep it to
yourself."

"Why have you told me?"

"Oh, for old times sake," she said sarcastically. "I do so
like to see you in emotional agony."

He regarded her with sadness. "We were never friends again,
were we?"

"Not after you destroyed us, no."

His face hardened. "Maybe if you had just showed me a reason
to stay true to you. . . for you to care this much tells me you
cared for me, that maybe you loved me. . . did you?"

"You know I did," she scoffed.

"You never showed it. You gave me nothing in all these
years. You gave me no reason to wait. Was the occasional hug
or kiss too much to ask? A loving word every now and then?
An affirmation that I wasn't waiting in vain?"

She blinked back tears as the same words that spilled from
his counterpart spilled now from him. "True love waits. What
we had. . . it couldn't have been true love. You gave up on me,
and with the worst person imaginable. So please, go back to
Earth and leave Kathryn alone. Let her find happiness with
someone else."

"That can't really be what you want. Not if we have a
chance."

She turned from him to look out the view port. "We have no
chance, Chakotay. She loves you, but she'll never love you
the way you loved her. My Chakotay and I, we had bitter
lust. That's about it. She used to love you, don't get me
wrong. If I had come back a few years ago, maybe you could
have been together. But it's too late now. Just make a life
with Seven, far away from me."

"But. . . "

"Go," she said, the one word tipped with venom. "And don't
repeat any of this."

She heard him sigh. If there was one thing he did know about
her, it was when she had effectively ended a conversation.
She didn't turn around until she heard the doors open and
close. He was gone.

She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. It was a
lie. . . of course she loved him, and always had. But fate had
not been kind to them the first time around. Now she was
cheating fate, and she didn't want to chance what fate would
do to them the second time around.

She bit her lip. Had she done the right thing? Or had she
just denied herself what could be the greatest love of her
life?

"Well, I've made plenty of mistakes in my life," she said to
herself. "No reason to stop now."

---

The End