[posted 2/4/99] When you're at home with time on your hands, you unearth some interesting things. I just rediscovered this and thought I'd share it. This was my response to the story contest at La-La Land. The assignment was to write a story starting out with "despite everthing, he knew that" and you could take it away from there. I guess I really did take it away. And I am apologizing in advance. I really do like this character, and what happens to him isn’t what I intended when I started out. All characters belong to Paramount/Viacom, and if I were doing this for profit, I would have made it longer and not contemplated entering it in the contest (which I didn't, BTW). ©1998, A.M. Telander Despite everything, he knew that. And only that. No matter how they or anyone else tried to convince him otherwise, there was always the one solid truth, and that was what he knew. Life could change dramatically… Voyager could leave him somewhere all by himself (or maybe with her, which appealed to him more than leaving him alone), he could spend the rest of the journey in the brig, he could be caught in phaser crossfire defending her and be rendered comatose for forty-seven years, he could be stripped of his commission tomorrow… but he always had the absolute truth. The thought haunted him as he sat there with his hands in his hair, lonely as he could ever remember being. The walls seemed to be drawing nearer and nearer to him, closing him in and shutting him out from everything that existed beyond the door… including her. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come? He rubbed his eyes and told himself, “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is the truth.” And the truth was why he was there, alone and angry. The thought of her invaded his mind like a plasma leak. Everything about her: her eyes, her laugh, her hair, the sound of her voice, the look in her eyes when she was sad… each thought made him wonder if she really was going to come. “She promised,” he said out loud. “She wouldn’t break her promise!” And then he realized that he didn’t know that for a fact. There was the one thing he was sure he knew, and her promise-keeping abilities were not it. An ensign in gold came in noiselessly and her curious eyes bored two holes through him. “Is there anything you need, sir?” Ensigns were, as a general rule, nervous, and this one was no exception. “If there was, you couldn’t get it for me, now could you?” The ensign ran her hands through her blond bob and replied anxiously, “I could ask the captain to let me bring you something. She likes you; she’d bend protocols for you.” The captain… But, before he got a chance to process his thoughts, the ensign breezed on. “What do you need, sir?” He looked up at the ensign, his tired eyes otherwise inscrutable. “I need the captain to come in here. Ask her to come, to talk to me.” “Have you changed your story, sir?” His brow wrinkled. “I don’t need to change my story. I’m telling the truth.” The ensign hesitated, then nodded curtly. “I’ll tell Captain Janeway, sir.” She left, leaving him to his musings. He shouldn’t have to send an ensign after her. Kathryn had promised to come again, and she should have kept her promise. He rubbed his tattooed forehead, a futile attempt at making the incessant hammering in his head stop. His thoughts drifted back to the four of them again… Tuvok. Vorik. Paris. B’Elanna. His eyes didn’t cloud up at the thought of her… she had been one of his best friends on board, second only to Kathryn, but he’d cried enough for her. Four people, though. They were dead, and on his away mission. “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault,” was his mantra. “They killed them, they killed them, they killed them, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. I told them, I warned them, I couldn’t have killed them. They say I’m crazy, but I can’t be.” But that was precisely why she wouldn’t believe him. Because the Doctor, the doctor on the planet, and everyone else said he was crazy, although he was pretty sure that Kathryn wanted to believe him. But, Kathryn wasn’t a woman who would believe something against what the science had already proved. And, now, she, the woman he thought loved him, had changed her point of view and was regarding him as a child, because she questioned his sanity. It angered him and there was nothing he could do. She denied him his akoonah, afraid he would hurt himself; she wouldn’t even allow him his medicine bundle. His spirit guide had abandoned him, and he had no way to prove to wonderful, beautiful Kathryn he wasn’t insane. But, no matter what the doctors and the experts and his best friend said, he still knew one thing, and only one thing. He wasn’t crazy. Despite everything, he knew that. Comments (and they don't have to be all good! If you didn't like something, tell me!!!) can be directed to estrella47@yahoo.com Anyone else think it's ironic that I, the P/T Nut Extrordinaire since day 1, never can come up with any P/T fic, that it's always J/C based???