Title: Undeliverable
Author: jat sapphire
Contact: [email protected]
Rating: R
Codes: J/Kes
Series: VOY
Summary: Janeway records a letter to Kes. After "The Gift." Response to the Femme Fuh-q Fest and the letter challenge.Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek. Kes almost kissed a woman but that was when she was possessed. So I've just made this up, because I think she can do lots better than Neelix. Or even Tom.
Archive: Sure.
Notes: You know, I can't believe I have the gall to pair anybody with Janeway when Boadicea has done it all better. Oh, well. Some references to "Sacred Ground," "Before and After," and "The Gift." No discernable plot. No connection to Kiff’s "Un-" Series.
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Undeliverable
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I'll never forget the feather-light softness of your hair, or the impossible depth of your eyes. I'll never forget the way your skin tasted, especially my favorite, softest spot on your throat, where I bruised you more than once. I'll never forget how sweet your voice was always, but sweeter yet when you called to me, told me what you wanted and how very much you wanted it, while my tongue wrote love-letters on the skin of your thighs and flirted with your beautiful wet pubic hair. Women are flowers. You were the most exotic, the most hothouse-fragile, of the flowers I have ever known.
Dear Kes. Isn't that how letters start?
I wish.
I wish.
I remember carrying you in my arms into the Nakami sanctuary when we thought it would kill you, hoped it would make you well. Strong as I've thought myself, it was the first time I'd ever held anyone like that. And when you woke in my arms it was as if you belonged to me.
I was afraid to speak to you about it.
Everything has an explanation, I had always thought, but now I had more than one and couldn't choose among them. My ordeal changed me physically--the Doctor's treatment changed you physically--and that saved us both. I had faith and that saved us. The spirits had mercy on us and saved us.
I loved you too much to let you go, and that saved us. Oh, yes, I was saved, I knew when you opened your eyes.
And lost. I knew that too.
Chakotay's eyes can still warm me, and Seven's trust makes me feel almost as strong as she is. But you, you gave me uncertainty, a gift I suspect would be greater than any other you gave me or all of us, if I only knew how to lift it, open it, own it, understand it.
I wish.
I wish I had that day back, when I kissed you first and you kissed back, moved your mouth down my body and woke me up, taking out the frozen Captain parts as surely and magically as you took the Borg implant out of Seven's brain. With your mind. With your compassion. With your love. It shouldn't have been possible, but you did it, for a while. I wish it had been longer.
I wish you had that longer future that you lived backward into nothing. It doesn't make sense to wish that, since I died in that future.
I wish I understood spirits more, or believed them more, because I think that's what you are since your change. I've spoken to spirits before; why not now?
My arms feel so empty where I held you, more than once, carried you to my bed. I doubt you ever knew why it moved me so to do that, though you never said no when I wanted to. I wonder if you felt anything like that, carrying us all thousands of lightyears with your last mortal breath.
I don't want to end this letter. I don't know how.
All right. I'll close my eyes, put my finger on the manual control for the Log, and before I shut it off, I'll think again about you blooming under my mouth, you closing your eyes and clenching your hands and the wet pulsing of your opening around my tongue ... did it feel like that? A little? Becoming a spirit?
And when I next feel that shaking and that rapture, will I glimpse where you have gone?
I don't really believe that. I'll try to. I'll learn.
I'll love you. Still. Among the other explanations.
< click >
**end**