Whispers & Echoes-Part 4

Disclaimer: All belongs to the Gods on the Mount--Paramount. I just get to play chess with them. All parts rated Nc-17 to be safe.

Whispers & Echoes

by Lady Janus

Part 4: The Echo of Dreams

Kathryn dropped the padd in frustration onto the bed and stared out the window as the snow continued to fall. There was no way to make simple log entries about this--there were no words to express their pain and she didn't know if he would ever come home again. After his initial deluge of anger, he'd returned ten hours later, packed his camping gear, clothing, food supplies, medicine bundle and taken his communicator without a word to her--without even attempting to listen to her. Since then they hadn't exchanged a word in two weeks.

Oh, she knew exactly where he was--in the cave where they'd stored the boat, but a diagnostic of the communicator showed that he'd disabled the receiver function. All that was left was the locator and the biomonitor to tell her he was still alive and she was grateful for that at least. He didn't want to even hear her voice and all her explanations had been lost in the dead, frozen air between them before she realised he couldn't hear her. She had gone to the cave in the raging, blinding storm four days before and found it's entry way blocked by the heavy wooden door on which she had pounded uselessly--trying to explain how everything had changed and how much she needed his help.

She began to cry softly again, her tears falling like the snow--she had needed his help, his love and support--but in the end, she had truly been alone.

****

Chakotay held her as she continued her dry heaves over the toilet. "Gods Kathryn," he croaked anxiously as he fumbled with the tricorder. "What's wrong? You were fine a few days ago."

In fact they'd both been in perfect health since being stranded nine months earlier, and except for a few minor mishaps, neither had needed much medical attention--until now. Her head pounded furiously, her eyes felt swollen and heavy and her stomach gave another painful lurch as she sat on the toilet cover.

"Leave me the tricorder and go make me some tea Chakotay," she told him, trying to catch her breath. "I'll be fine when this wave of nausea passes--I can handle the scan by myself."

Kathryn's hand shook as she took the tricorder from him and she fought to steady it. He left reluctantly. She looked bleakly at her reflection in the mirror and began the scan. As it beeped, she didn't even need to look at the results; looking only confirmed what she knew--she was pregnant. She didn't realise that she'd made any noise, but she must have, because he was back, tenderly lifting her up and taking her into the living room.

"What is it Kathryn?" he asked in concern as he settled her into one of the chairs.

She began to cry as her mind raced trying to find answers. "I'm pregnant, Chakotay," she said fearfully showing him the results of the scan. "It's a girl," she continued, sobbing as she reached for him.

He looked at her flabbergasted for a moment and then a wide grin transformed his face as he looked down at her mid-section. "You're pregnant?" he gasped in disbelief. "Oh gods!" he shouted as it fully registered and he scooped her up into his arms again and spun her around, leaving her dizzy and breathless. "You wonderful, beautiful, miraculous woman," he shouted, kneeling in front of her as she sat down again and tenderly running his hand over her abdomen. "A girl, a beautiful daughter--oh Kathryn, this is wonderful. How far along are you?" he asked, breathless with excitement.

"A little over a month," she whispered through her tears. "How did this happen Chakotay?" she asked fearfully as his happiness washed over her. "We've both been careful to monitor our fertility suppresser implants--they were working fine. This shouldn't have happened. How could this possibly have happened?" she asked, her voice rising in despair.

He looked up at her in confusion, and gently brushed the long locks of hair out of her face. "Does it matter Kathryn?" he asked softly. "A joyful accident, a glorious miracle--all that matters is that it happened, and we're going to have a baby, a beautiful little girl."

"But it's not all that matters," she cried, heartbroken. "We decided that we wouldn't have any children. All the reasons for that decision haven't changed Chakotay--we can't have a baby, not here, not now."

She could see the alarm in his eyes as he attempted to put his arms around her. "You're overwhelmed Kathryn, you should get back to bed and I'll bring you that tea," he said softly. "Everything's changed now, you weren't pregnant when we made those decisions--we'll just have to adapt to it."

He rose quickly and hurried into the kitchen, but she didn't move from her chair. She probed her abdomen tentatively as the tears ran down her cheeks, and looked up as he returned with the cup of tea, carefully skirting around the components for the cloaking device she'd left strewn on the floor.

"But they haven't changed Chakotay," she said as he stood frozen holding the cup out to her. "Look at us Chakotay, how can we bring a child into this world under these conditions. Look at the tricorder readings--she's already infected with the virus. A virus we can't cure, one that will condemn her to live on this planet for the rest of her life." The hard look that came into his eyes frightened Kathryn, but she pressed on, trying to get him to remember all those reasons they had discussed. "What happens when we die, Chakotay--what happens to her, God forbid, if we die before she is able to take care of herself?" she asked, horrified at the thought.

She could see him making a visible effort to control himself. "Come, Kathryn," he said, his voice coming out harsh and ragged. "Let's get you to bed. We can't make any decisions right now--we both need time to think this over. Please go and lie down, Kathryn. We'll discuss it later!"

She sat in the chair looking up at him and trembled at the building rage that infused his voice with every word. Slowly she stood and began to make her way to the bedroom. She heard the cup slam into the wall and clatter uselessly away, unbroken.

"God damn you, Kathryn!" he shouted, turning her roughly around to face him. "What are you suggesting? What the hell are you suggesting, Kathryn? That we kill her, pretend that she never existed? Is that what you want to do?"

She was screaming now--in despair and anguish for him, herself and their child. "No that is not what I want!" she cried desperately. "But we have to think of what this means, Chakotay. What do we have to give this baby? What chance at a life will she have here? Are we ready to condemn her selfishly to a life of utter loneliness for what may well be her entire life with no chance at a life of her own--no chance of love?"

He released her so unexpectedly that she stumbled against wall. "We'll make those chances Kathryn!" he replied. There was a menacing rumble in his voice she'd never associated with him. "We'll work harder to find a cure and we won't give up! We'll find a way to leave here Kathryn, we'll find a way for her--and even if we can't catch up with Voyager there are other places we could go. We could take the shuttle back to Ocampa--or better yet to Evansville's colony back on that Briori planet. You could see Earhart again."

She heard the desperate hope in his voice and wanted with equal desperation to believe him. "But what if we can't leave here--what then?" she whispered, clinging to the wall for support. Tears ran down her cheeks.

"Then we'll make a life for her here," he replied reasonably, his voice almost normal again. "We'll make a good life for her here. She'll have us with her a long time--we'll teach her what she needs to know. There's no reason for her to be lonely, maybe even in time there'll be more children--"

As he said it, Kathryn's fury ignited and exploded.

"More children!" she screamed hysterically and the smile that had begun to form on his face shattered. "Are you even listening to what you're saying? Are you even thinking for God's sake Chakotay? You want to bring even more . . . more children into this impossible situation, just so this one won't be lonely? And just what kind of life are you setting up here for them as they grow up with no one but each other to turn to?" she asked hoarsely in horror.

"And you want to kill our greatest hope for the future Kathryn! You're not even listening to what I have to say!" he spat venomously. "Don't I have a say in this? It's my child too," he shouted and brought his face close to hers so that she had to flatten against the wall.

She could see the implacable look in his eyes.

"You want my permission--my help to kill our child? Well you'll never get it. You want to talk about selfishness? You're the one who's being selfish--selfish and afraid and you're willing to kill our baby because of it. Well I won't have any part in it! We created a life Kathryn, for better or for worse, we created this child together and I am not going to allow you to just throw it away because you're afraid!"

Kathryn wrapped her arms around herself as he flung out of the house, not even stopping to take a jacket. The door stood open, but she didn't notice as she watched him quickly disappear from view. She felt the coldness begin to spread through her limbs from within as she stumbled into the bedroom and fell across the bed. She didn't cry as she crawled beneath the covers shivering violently, the tears had already frozen in her--she'd never been so cold in all her life.

****

"Chakotay, please--I have to talk to you, there's something I have to explain," she pleaded with him, trying to block his exit from the greenhouse.

It had been a month since he'd last spoken to her and she looked pale and tired. He had shut the receiver component of the communicator off after his second night in the cave when he couldn't listen to any more of her pleading and her excuses. She also couldn't beam in because of the minerals in the rocks; it was one of the reasons they'd chosen that particular cave as a storage area for things they couldn't easily cloak.

He gave a frustrated groan as he tried to move past her and steeled himself to those gorgeous, tearful, blue eyes in her white face.

"Unless you're going to tell me that you over-reacted, that you're going to have our baby, Kathryn--that you'll give her a chance--we have nothing to talk about. I don't want to hear your explanations," he finished sarcastically.

He saw her pale even more, but she lifted her chin defiantly. "Then you're saying you don't want me without the child," she whispered.

His heart lurched painfully, but he stood his ground, holding her gaze. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying," he replied, angry that she should force him to make this choice.

"I see," she continued in a level voice, standing aside to let him pass. "Goodbye, Chakotay, I won't bother you anymore. If you ever decide you want to come back to the house--that you can live under the same roof as me, your room will always be there." Without another word, she turned and went inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.

So the great Captain Kathryn Janeway had made her decision, he thought bitterly--she didn't want him and she didn't want his child. He shouldered the sack of vegetables and closed the greenhouse door behind him, wondering what she would do now.

The sharp claw of conscience gripped him as he began to walk away. What if something went wrong when she tried to do it alone? The safest time for an abortion was as early in the pregnancy as possible, preferably before 20 weeks. She was almost nine weeks along now, nearly half way there and the longer she waited, the more dangerous it would be--the fewer options she would have as to the number of procedures that could be safely performed. Then there would be none.

He thought again of her closed off face, the Captain's face, shutting him out of the decision as always and he continued to walk away. He was tired of being the one who had to work for this relationship--to get at her reasons and allaying her fears as he had done when she'd been running scared at the beginning. Well she was running scared again, refusing to listen to his reasons, to what he wanted. He knew what she wanted; she wanted him to tell her it was all right to do this, that he would still love her if she did, but he had no say in what would happen to their child. Well it was her decision--her choice--and she'd made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

As he tramped through the snow, he thought again of those precious few moments of incomparable happiness when she had announced that she was pregnant. Moments that should have lasted a lifetime, not mere minutes--seconds even--when he realised that she did not share his sense of celebration, that all she could see were problems. Well, he would fight her with the only weapons he had against her; his help, his love, and time. He didn't know how much longer she would wait; he only knew that the longer she did, the harder it would be for her to do it alone.

****

Kathryn looked up tiredly from her microscope--the cell cultures were doing well. Hopefully in a few weeks this batch as well as those she'd taken from the monkeys and any other mammals she could find, would give her some clue as to a cure for the virus. She looked at the cloaking device, assembled and stored in the corner. She gave a bitter, unused-sounding laugh, the only thing not installed was the trialurite energy core--not that they really needed it any longer. Neither one of them cared who came along and blasted them from the sky. She'd even worked out most of the modifications they would need for a phased cloak--even found a surprising interaction between the mesoquartzite and the phasing mechanism, but even that failed to keep her attention for more than a few days.

She sighed as she put her cultures back into their slots in the incubator. She didn't even know why she kept hunting for a cure, except it gave her something to do during these endless winter days.

Six months of winter--the planet took over fifteen standard months to complete one local year. They had been on this world a little over thirteen standard Terran months, more than a year, but it would take at least another two months to return to the early springtime conditions when they were first stranded.

She hadn't even remembered the anniversary of Voyager's departure until two days after it had passed and when she finally thought of it, she found that she really didn't care much one way or the other. There was no one to celebrate it with.

She took a sip of coffee--her one indulgence from the replicator. Her diet was almost exclusively vegetarian by necessity; although now and then she would defrost a piece of fish or poultry and char it almost to a crisp before forcing it down in order to get enough protein.

The only way she knew that he'd been around was from seeing his tracks in the snow around the greenhouse, or noticing when something had been taken from the pantry--a sack of blacknuts, some grain or some other supply. He usually waited for her to take her daily walk, in order to avoid meeting her.

But she'd seen him again earlier that day, when one of the rare winter plasma storms had forced her to cut her walk short. Her heart almost broke when his gaze automatically went for her abdomen as she unwrapped her heavy coat, before meeting her eyes in a terrible rictus of pain and sorrow and disappointment and heartbreak and disgust. He had hurried out of the house without a word and taken shelter in the greenhouse while he waited for the storm to pass.

If she had been pregnant, she would have been in her fifth month, too late to safely perform an abortion. What he didn't know was that the day of their last conversation in the greenhouse, it had already been a moot point for more than a week. He had not been willing to listen to her, to give her a chance to explain what had happened--she was nothing to him without his child.

Now all she could do was keep at this fruitless search for a cure--she didn't even know what good it would do if one were to be found. All she knew was he wouldn't see her through some of the darkest days of her life. He'd left her in the cold, frozen, white world, pounding desperately--futilely--on his door, condemning her to endure the darkness alone. There was a cold and empty place inside her now and it would never be filled again.

****

So that was it--poof! And a child was gone as if it had never existed, all on her say so. Her guilty eyes had followed his to her flat abdomen, which had borne life only a few short months before. She hadn't made an effort to speak this time, to offer another of her "explanations". She had just stood there and waited for him to leave and he'd done so gladly, eager to get as far away from her as he could at that moment.

He closed his eyes now, placed his hand on the ahkoonah and began to chant a prayer for his daughter's soul; he, at least, would mourn the passing of that short life from this one.

"Why are you here Chakotay?" His eyes flew open and found himself in his dark cave again. He looked around for his father, but realised that he was not in the dream plane. He looked down at the crackling fire ring. Although he had a portable generator to keep warm, he preferred the fire. He'd moved his bed and most of his things from his bedroom early on, everything except his computer. Whenever he needed to something to read, or he needed to record his thoughts, he used a padd and made regular uploads from the computer when he re-supplied.

Chakotay supposed he'd known all along that she'd terminated the pregnancy--gods what a turn of phrase. He had known, although seeing her at a distance for so many months all bundled up in her winter gear as she went for her daily walks, he'd fallen into a comfortable fantasy of hoping desperately she'd seen reason and had not gone through with it. But after four months, his worst nightmare had been confirmed and he'd hoped he could finally be at peace enough to contact his spirit guide or his father.

However, each time he'd tried, he'd been unable to move beyond this consciousness. He had his way had been blocked by enigmatic questions in his father's voice or he found himself unable to concentrate.

He gave up in exhaustion and sadly folded his medicine bundle. He would try again later, when he wasn't so angry. In a way, a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders; he knew now exactly what she was capable of.

****

Chakotay,

Thanks for the fish. Here is a new formulation of supplements I hope will see us through the next few months. Take one each day with a glass of orange juice during a meal for the best results. Kathryn.

He looked at the simple note on the desk again, then finally swallowed one small capsule with a glass of juice and pocketed the vial. He stared out the window as he dropped the replicated bottle of juice into his carrying case--spring had returned and with it the birds and small animals. The nights were still chilly, but it was good to be in the sun's warmth again.

A few days before, in a spate of good will after the first good catch of the season, he'd left a plate of leftover fried fish for her on the table. All she'd had to do was warm it up. This was her thanks. Well it was a start considering they hadn't spoken ten words to each other in close to six months. He gave a wry laugh as he gathered up his things and bit into one of the star flower fruits as he left. It was hard to believe that there had ever been a time when he could barely wait to hear the sound of her voice after being separated from her for more than a few hours. But here they were, reduced to writing short, curt notes to each other about fish and dietary supplements.

The mud squelched under his boots as he trudged along the riverbank back to the cave. Along with spring, his ability to contact his spirit guide had returned, but rather than gaining any sort of peace, he had only been left with a sense of frustration and a number of puzzling questions from both his guide and his father.

"Why are you here, Chakotay?" The smoke thinned and he'd met the feral amber eyes of his spirit sister.

"I have come to mourn the passing of my child."

"What child?"

"The one I will never have a chance to know," he'd answered sadly. "The one taken from me before I ever got a chance to know her. I didn't have a choice in her life or in her death."

"We know of no such child, Chakotay," his Dream Father had answered, picking up the wooden flute, with two pieces of broken wood sticking out of the back of it and long, frayed lengths of string, as he stood beside the she-wolf and turned away. "Do what you have come to do, Chakotay, if you feel you must. We have elsewhere to be."

They had faded away, leaving him to perform his solitary ritual and each time he had contacted them after that, they had spoken only for a short while before leaving him with more questions--while answering none.

He thought again about Kathryn as he unpacked his weekly supplies and changed out of his sweaty clothing. He wondered where she went on her daily walks and what she had done all winter. He knew she'd completed the cloaking device, but she'd done that fairly early.

Part of the reason he'd left the fish for her was because a few days before he'd exited the shuttle after running its monthly diagnostic and seen her in the front of the house as she started down towards the river. She hadn't put on her jacket yet and he was shocked to see how thin she had looked. She didn't see him, but as he studied her, he noticed that her pace had been slow and tired--carefully picking her way along the path as if unsure of where to put her feet.

He realised now, that as the winter had progressed she had slowed down, but seeing her leave earlier in the day, she had seemed more energetic and lively. Perhaps it had only been the late winter blues. He laughed at himself; here was a woman who'd made it abundantly clear that she didn't want him in her life and here he was worrying because she looked a little thin. He left the cave again and headed out towards the spot where patches of berries had sprung up in the last few weeks after the final thaw. If it got a little warmer and drier in a few days, he'd try to move the boat by himself.

****

The shrill, incessant whine over Kathryn's commbadge puzzled her at first, until she realised that it was the alarm from Chakotay's communicator, indicating that he was hurt or ill. She slapped it reflexively, calling, "Janeway to Chakotay," before she remembered that he'd taken the receiver function off-line months before.

She ran into the house and grabbed the medkit, turning on the computer and asking for his location and condition. He was only about half a kilometre away upstream, close to the river--an area she knew well. According to the biomonitor, he'd suffered a sprained ankle, twisted the ligaments in his knee, bruised his shoulder and was currently unconscious from what appeared to be a minor blow to the head. She also knew that since he'd accepted her offering of the supplements two weeks before, he was also a little run-down.

She quickly downloaded the information into her tricorder, made sure the link to the house computer was stable, then went into the shed for the travois they'd lovingly made the summer before for just such emergencies. As she hurried along, frequently consulting the instrument, she decided that she would have to take him back to the house where she would be better able to treat him under the guidance of the computer. She supposed she could have used the shuttle's transporter to move him more quickly, but she needed to assess his injuries first hand and didn't want to depend on an automatic beam-out with no one at the controls unless she absolutely had to.

She found him easily, face down in the grass on the riverbank, the overturned boat beside him. She felt a spurt of anger as she knelt beside him--the stubborn fool would rather move the damned thing in his obviously weakened condition, than call for her help. She consulted the tricorder; none of his injuries were severe and the concussion was mild. She administered the recommended hypospray dosage of neuratheramine before she proceeded to roll him as gently as she could onto the travois. Taking a moment to rest, she consulted the tricorder to make sure she hadn't exacerbated any of his other injuries, but there was nothing that couldn't be treated in a few minutes with the soft tissue regenerator. As soon as she had him securely strapped in, she headed as quickly as she could towards the house, pulling him behind her with the minimum of bumps and general disturbances as she could manage.

Manoeuvring him onto the bed was the hardest part, but she had finally managed it, travois and all, before loosening the straps and rolling him off. She laughed softly as she pulled the sheet over him after removing his boots and clothing; she couldn't believe he'd slept through it all as she scanned him with the tricorder again. According to the analysis, he should be waking up within six hours. Finally, she took the regenerator and repaired the minor damage he'd done to his limbs.

As she consulted the tricorder again, she noted with satisfaction that he was in relatively good health--a little run down as she'd suspected, but otherwise almost normal. In a few days, he would for all intents and purposes be normal again. She gave him wry look before gathering up the medical instruments and returning them to their cases. Before leaving, she placed the tricorder on active scan and left it on the night table beside the bed. It would warn her if there were any complications, or when he began to awaken.

****

Chakotay awoke in familiar surroundings--or at least surroundings that had been familiar until almost six and a half months before, Kathryn's bedroom. As he tried to figure out what was going on with his head pounding like mad, she entered carrying a tray, which she placed on the night table, before picking up the tricorder and scanning him.

"Lie still for a minute while I finish this scan Chakotay," she ordered consulting the instrument. "You've had a small accident."

"Accident?" he asked in confusion as she laid down the instrument and picked up the hypospray from the tray. "What happened?"

He saw a glint of humour in her eyes as she bent to administer the hypospray. "That should take care of your headache," she began as the pounding instantly began to abate. "You tried to move the boat by yourself, but the boat had other ideas," she quipped as he blushed slightly. "You sprained your ankle and damaged your shoulder and knee, they're repaired, but may be tender for the next day or so. You've had a mild concussion and should stay in bed at least until noon tomorrow." She settled the tray on his lap as he sat up. "You're also a bit run down," she commented. "There's a supplement dissolved in the orange juice and I've brought you a bowl of chicken soup--replicated. You'll be fine in a few days. Don't hesitate to call if you need anything else," she said turning to the door.

He felt a rush of gratitude and called out to her, "Thank you, Kathryn."

She turned in the doorway and flashed him a brief smile. "You're welcome, Chakotay," she replied before shutting the door.

He looked down at the tray, feeling a wave of regret as he drank half the glass of juice in one go. It had taken an accident to get them to speak more words to each other than they had in months. He felt a slight upset in his stomach he always felt after he'd taken one of her supplements, but it quickly settled as he began the soup.

****

Chakotay didn't know how much time had passed before awakened from his deep slumber, only that he was getting persistent and very strong signals from his bladder that it needed to be emptied immediately--if not sooner. He stumbled bleary-eyed to the bathroom, noting that Kathryn had curled up in the two easy chairs pushed together, sound asleep. He left the bathroom, went to the linen closet and grabbed a sheet to cover her.

He was amazed at how tiny she looked, as well as how exhausted. He picked up the padd that had dropped from her hand and glanced at it before putting it down on the desk, "Recovery analysis of biomonitor assessment; Chakotay, day 16--dosage 70 mg per day". He looked in shock from the padd to her sleeping face and then back again. He picked it up again and sat down heavily in the nearest chair.

Tricorder analysis of viral DNA eradication: 38% reduction in amount of viral DNA in cells over levels estimated from biomonitor analysis of day 15. Overall estimation of reduction in level of viral DNA in cells over day 0, 84.3%; reduction in levels of viral DNA in cells from last tricorder scan 210 days ago, 86.47%. Estimated time until complete eradication of viral DNA, 25 days, after which, supplements should be reformulated to a lower dosage of 5 mg per day to ensure adequate levels of tetradiagorine and alpha-oxyhyaluramine are maintained in his system.

Cellular analysis of abdominal cysts: confirmed biomonitor analysis, all cysts benign, none cancerous; no evidence of cancer in any bodily system. Reduction in number of cysts over estimated number from biomonitor analysis day 0, 60.2%; estimated mean reduction in size of cysts over day 0, 90.4%. All cysts should be cleared up by the end of treatment regimen in 25 days and remain suppressed with lower dosage of formulation.

Notes: confirmed, citric acid in orange juice appears to enhance greatly the absorption of tetradiagorine into non-cancerous cysts by a factor of 5.47 over cancerous cysts; confirmed, suppression of oncogene function complete in pre-cancerous cysts; hypothesis, sustained low levels of formulation in system should prevent re-infection by viral pathogen.

He thumbed back through her days of analysis with trembling fingers and let the padd drop into his lap as he stared at her. Her dietary supplements--no wonder he'd felt queasy taking them on an empty stomach and no wonder he'd felt run down and tired since he'd started taking them, but he'd put that down to the fact that he might have been coming down with something for a while now.

In fact, he'd been feeling better, more invigorated over the last two days--because, he realised now, he was over the worst part of the treatment regimen. Why hadn't she told him, he wondered furiously. Was she ever planning to tell him? Oh, by the souls of his ancestors, the baby--if she had only waited, the baby would have been fine! Rage caught in his throat as he looked down at her peaceful, sleeping face.

She had thrown their child's life away for nothing! No wonder she didn't tell him she'd found a cure--she'd been afraid as usual!

"What child?"

"We know of no such child Chakotay."

The winds whispered to him and he couldn't drown out their voices.

"Why are you here?"

"We know of no such child, Chakotay."

"Where is the harp, Chakotay?"

"Why have you broken the harp, cut its strings so it no longer plays?"

"What harp Father?"

"The harp you've been taught how to play. Why have your cut its strings?"

"We know of no such child, Chakotay."

"What child? What child . . . what child . . . what child . . ."

Amid the whispers, he looked down at the padd again and turned back to day 16. He hadn't had any cancerous cysts, yet somewhere there had been information on the absorption rate of the drug into cancerous cysts.

She'd had cancerous cysts--cancerous abdominal cysts.

His stomach lurched and he gave an involuntary cry as he rose unsteadily and stumbled to the bathroom. Suddenly, he felt her holding his head and rubbing his back as he expelled all the hatred and anger he'd kept bottled up for the past six months.

"Are you all right, Chakotay?" she asked in concern, handing him a glass of water, which he gulped and choked on.

He looked into her anxious eyes. "Were you ever going to tell me?" he croaked in despair.

"Tell you?" she asked, clearly confused.

He pushed past her and scooped up the padd from the spot he'd dropped it. "Were you ever going to tell me about this? Were you ever going to tell me you found a cure?" he asked angrily, shaking the padd in front her face.

"Yes," she whispered, turning pale.

"When? When were planning to tell me Kathryn?" he demanded in a low voice. "Why did you think you had to trick me into the taking the treatment?"

Kathryn looked away from his face. "I wasn't sure how well it would work--my regimen isn't completed yet, but you started to get more cysts and--" She broke off and met his eyes. "And I didn't think you'd take it from me after what happened."

"What did happen, Kathryn?" he asked softly. "What about the baby?"

"What about the baby?" she repeated moving past him towards the desk.

"Were you ever going to tell me about the cancer?" He watched her back stiffen at his question before she began to tidy up the padds.

"What was there to tell?" she returned in a dull voice as she continued her task.

"What happened to the baby, Kathryn?" he asked again, grabbing her arm and turning her to face him. He'd thought she'd been crying, but she stared at him dry-eyed.

She folded her arms in front of her defensively and continued to stare at him. "Since you figured out about the cancer, you probably know the answer to that already," she replied stonily. "There was no baby--at least not your baby--just my body playing a cosmic joke on me. We were fighting over nothing more than a mass of cells that were about to go cancerous. It registered as a child because the virus acts as a sort of weird teratogenic oncogene, turning on the embryonic development program in the cells of the cyst when it implanted in my uterus. It even began to form organ systems like a real embryo."

He listened in horror as she continued tonelessly.

"We never bothered to check its genetic compliment that first night. Why would we think to? It was a child and the only way it could have got there was if it was yours--but it had started out as a simple clone of me. Then a little more than two weeks later, the developmental program went haywire and it was nothing but a mass of cancer cells--a teratoma. There wasn't anything left to do but get rid of it."

The whispers returned to cry in his ears, while phantom hands beat at his door in the storm.

"Please let me explain, Chakotay..."

"I need your help..."

"There isn't any baby, please help me."

He'd closed his ears and his mind until she'd gone away. He'd tracked her back to the house through the storm, seen her safely inside, then closed himself away from her in his cave--and she'd had to do what she had to alone.

He tuned back into the toneless recitation.

"Except it wasn't the only one, the cysts wouldn't stop forming in my uterus--they'd begin the developmental program then go cancerous. I tried the standard chemotherapy, but it only slowed their growth a little. So I began to study the cancerous cysts and I found that the ones I took out right after the plasma storms had slower growth rates than the ones a week later. I took the tissue samples from the monkeys and other animals out of stasis and allowed them to proliferate--they became cancerous over time. I checked as many hibernating animals as I could find. They were free of cancer, but once I got the samples back to the incubator and they came out of their dormant state, the cells became cancerous. The few birds, monkeys and small mammals I'd tagged had migrated further south. All moved into areas with high frequencies of plasma storms.

"By comparing the compounds in my frozen samples and those I drew fresh from the hibernating animals, I isolated a few compounds present in the frozen samples collected over the summer. There was a progressively lower concentration of two compounds in the samples collected later in the fall as the frequency and severity of the plasma storms dropped. One of the compounds was similar to the compound alpha-oxyhyalurine, which I found in the green fish last summer--except it was in a beta form and deoxygenated and the alpha-oxy derivative from the fish was extremely concentrated and potent. However, after the one of the plasma storms, I checked the air and water carefully for the beta-deoxy form and found trace amounts.

"Adding the beta-deoxy form directly to the newly activated tissue from the hibernating animals caused it to be transformed into the alpha-oxy derivative specific to that species, which in turn caused a cascade of other biochemical reactions which kept the tissue from becoming cancerous. Adding the beta-deoxy form to the primate tissue, not only caused it to produce the alpha-oxy form, and caused it to remain viable, but also produced a second compound, tetradiagorine. When the second compound was added to the cancerous monkey cells together with the alpha-oxyhyalurine, they formed a dimer, which caused the cancer cells to stop proliferating and die. However, the tetradiagorine only had limited success penetrating human cell membranes, but could be helped with the addition of citric acid, which bound to it. It took a little molecular engineering to make derivatives of both compounds less toxic to our systems, but they still had to be rather potent in order to remain effective against the virus and had to be taken in rather high doses.

"The reason that the fish had such high concentration of the alpha-oxy form is because it sequesters the beta-deoxy form from the water as protection against the larva of the insect that plays host to the virus as well as other predators. The larva leaves the water--I'm not sure when and burrows into the earth where it becomes a wingless adult. That's why I couldn't find it. In the spring, the adults leave the ground, looking for a blood meal from whatever small mammal it can find. It lays its eggs in or near the water, then either burrows back into the soil, or dies probably depending on it's age--my guess is that the adults live a few years. I've found a lot of carcasses along the river and in moist areas of the forest in the last month, but they're decomposing rather quickly. If the spring is the only time that the insects come out to feed on blood, that explains why I couldn't find any trace of them--they were mostly gone by the time the Doctor awakened us from stasis.

"I'm not sure why my cysts became cancerous earlier than yours. It was probably due to gender differences, body type, hereditary pre-dispositions to cancer--a lot of things or a combination of all or any one of them, I don't know. The entire thing depended on the plasma storms however, and the production and of the beta-deoxyhylaurine compound as one of the reaction by-products of the coherent plasma streamer formations we detected. In us it simply arrested the action of the virus because of the frequency of the plasma storms during the late spring and summer months. Since we didn't have the genes to be able to convert it to the active alpha-oxy form, nor produce the dimer necessary for destroying the virus, the amounts in the environment--the air and the water--was enough to keep the virus in check.

"On Voyager, there was none of the beta-deoxy form present, so that when our bodies metabolised what was stored in our cells, we got sick. In the other animals native to this part of the world it provided full protection by being enzymatically transformed into it's alternate form and activating other genes in the animals to produce compounds which would eradicate the virus or keep it at very low levels. In the winter when the plasma storms are scarce, the animals either hibernate or begin to leave once the beta-deoxy form begins to decline in the environment during the fall. The only animals active in the winter, were those that were uninfected, because their ecology leads them to be active during the late summer, fall and winter, or those somehow immune to the virus."

All through her explanation, Chakotay could feel himself growing more desperate as he realised what a horrible mistake he'd made. He'd put her through seven months of hell for absolutely nothing. There had never been a child, only the most unimaginable pain and heartbreak and she'd had to face them alone. Even so, she had been able to make the best of it and find a cure for their illness. He looked at her in continued disbelief, not knowing what to say--sorry didn't seem nearly enough, but it was all he had.

"I'm sorry Kathryn," he said softly. "I'm sorry for everything."

"I'm sorry too," she replied looking away sadly. "If I'd had my way, our child would be dead just months before the cure was found. All I can say is that at the time it seemed like the right choice."

"Or the cure might never have been found," he whispered. He tried to move closer to her but she moved away.

"Please, Chakotay," she said softly, turning away again. "We're both tired. Go back to bed, you're still recovering from a concussion and need to sleep. I'll stay out here."

He didn't know what to say, and realised that the best thing at that moment was to do nothing, not to press her. He'd been pressing her all winter, for all the wrong answers, ignoring her, silencing her or speaking louder so that he wouldn't have to listen to what she was saying. He shook his head and returned to the bedroom. Just at the threshold, he remembered something he'd forgotten and turned to face her. "Thank you, Kathryn, for the cure," he said simply and heard a low sob.

"You're welcome, Chakotay," she replied, her back still to him, her shoulders shaking as she leaned against the desk crying softly.

He entered the bedroom and closed the door, leaving her to her private grief. He dropped to his knees and laid his head on the bed as he sobbed softly. The whispers swirled around in his head, ghosts of the last seven months mocking him. He'd thrown away everything he'd held dear in his anger once again--stubbornly refusing to listen to anyone else because he had known he was right, refusing to acknowledge that someone else had a valid point of view. He'd thrown his colony away because he'd been certain that his belief in the Federation was right; then he'd thrown Starfleet away because of his absolute certainty that the Marquis was right; and now he'd thrown Kathryn away because he had known absolutely that he had been right. He didn't know how to make it up to her or if he could even make it up to her. But as he dragged his aching body into the bed, he vowed that he would make it up to her.

****

"Where do we go from here?" he asked the next morning as they sat across from each other after breakfast.

She looked down at her pale hands on the table and answered, "I don't know Chakotay." She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. "But I do know that we can't just pick up where we left off six months ago, not after this. We can't just pretend that we haven't been the source of some of the darkest moments in each other's lives."

He listened to her speak without interrupting. He realised that through all this, he'd never really listened to her.

"I don't know if it's possible to go back to having an intimate relationship, or if it's right to. I sit here, and all I know is that when I needed you the most, you weren't here for me--you shut me out and I had no one to turn to." She gave a small gasp and wiped her eyes as she continued. He had to force himself not to get up and gather her in his arms--it wasn't what she needed or wanted at the moment. What she needed was to be heard.

"But it's not only that--I couldn't give you the one thing you'd really ever asked of me. Did you know that I made a vow to you?" she asked softly, meeting his eyes. His heart leapt at her words and broke from the misery in her eyes. "No, you couldn't have known that," she whispered and looked away.

"The night we became lovers, I vowed that I wouldn't deny you anything it was in my power to give. But when you asked for that baby, all I could see were my fears come true. All I could hear was the sound of it crying because it needed to be fed, because it was in pain, because it was dying and no one came to pick it up--because there was no one left to pick it up. You know, I've said it to my crews hundreds of times, "where there's life there's hope". You could see that hope and I couldn't and I can't get away from the fact that if I'd had my way, our baby would be dead now--dead because I hadn't the courage to hope."

"You judge yourself too harshly, Kathryn," he replied as the silence stretched out between them. "You had a lot of courage--more than I did. You came to me time after time, but I was too proud, to bloody sure in my own righteousness to listen to anyone else's voice but my own. I've always said that I believed in a woman's right to choose, in anyone's right to choose what was done to their bodies, but when it came down to it, I didn't respect that you had the same choice. Before this, I couldn't even imagine forcing a woman to do something with her body she didn't want to do--I'd always known that I would loath any man who did that, and yet it's exactly what I did.

"One way or another, I was going to force you to have that child, stay away from you until you were past the point of no return, because I was sure you wouldn't do it alone. Gods help me, I even went as far as to think that if you did do it alone and something went wrong, then you would deserve it because those were the consequences."

He looked into her streaming eyes through his own tears as he continued. "You couldn't have known you would find the cure and you only did because it was cancer and not a child, but what if it had been a child, Kathryn?" he asked softly, reaching for her trembling hand on the table. "You would be very ill or dying right now, both of you dying, because I certainly could not have worked this miracle--there was no way by any stretch of the imagination I could. You would have died, the baby would have died and I most certainly would have died by next winter, if not sooner. Believe me Kathryn, neither of us have the monopoly on guilt for some pretty bad mistakes right now. So we come back to the same question, what now?"

"I don't know," she cried softly. "I guess we start by trying to be friends again and go from there. I never intended for you to move out. Your room is still there, any time you want to come back, but . . ."

Her voice faltered--choked on tears.

"But I can't promise that we can even make a friendship work. There's so much anger and resentment on both sides--no, on my side--I don't know that I have what it takes to make it work again."

"But you're willing to try?" he asked, still holding her small hand.

"Yes," she replied, barely above a whisper.

"Thank you."

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