IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, Janeway, Chakotay.
PART TWO
"Papa, am I coming to see my real grandma?" Elizabeth asked, impatient and cold and fretting as she wriggled against him.
She was so tiny, she looked more like a two year old than a three year old. But her mouth had been working non-stop since they left Dorvan V. For a child who never spoke much, Elizabeth seemed to have sprung into life. He had had no qualms about leaving Sarah Hargreaves there, instructing her to find her own way to her people. She had to be gone when he returned to Dorvan. Sarah had been relieved, mostly. So had he been. Her presence, her attitude which had changed the second they stepped off Voyager and headed for Dorvan V had changed like lightning. She had been indifferent to Elizabeth's needs and mostly tried to get him to bed her. Her motives had been self-serving. That had never been part of their arrangement and Sarah, her advances spurned, turned on him and simply went through the motions of tending the child.
Sarah did what she had to with the baby, breastfeeding for only two months, then just going mechanically through her tasks of caring for Elizabeth with little or no compassion or instinct to care.
And, it had gone downhill from there after he had turned down her plea to sleep with her, reminding her of their arrangement. He had held her to her bargain that she at least raise Elizabeth to her third or fourth year after which she could leave. Elizabeth, very strangely, called her Sarah and not 'Mommy' and he knew that Sarah had coached the child to address her as such.
After Annika's visit, he had been stunned to learn of Kathryn's illness. That she wanted to see her daughter was one wish he wanted to grant her. How had it happened that he left it to Sarah to send Kathryn pictures of their daughter? How? From what Seven intimated, Kathryn didn't know what her daughter looked like. How devious had Sarah really been? He had believed that asking her to mother his baby for three years was the best thing he could do for Elizabeth, to give her at least a mother. Sarah had been anything but a nurturing parent. Elizabeth might well have been a stranger to her.
All the time he had thought only the best of her; he thought that she was the ideal person to carry his baby - a baby that Kathryn didn't want. Now, it seemed that Kathryn had never received any pictures of Elizabeth and he felt the onset of nausea at the thought that they had both been that heartless in their punishment of Kathryn.
A punishment taken too far.
Too far.
And so he told Elizabeth that she had a real mommy living on Earth, even when he knew that Kathryn was going to die. He wanted the child to know something of the woman who was her genetic mother. He was going to tell her later, when she was a little older and could understand the circumstances of her birth. Elizabeth had taken the news in her stride. She had never had much of anything with Sarah Hargreaves and the closest she was with anyone apart from himself was his sister. But Nyala had her own children to care for.
"I am going to see my mommy?"
"Yes, sweetheart. But first I am taking you to your grandma, okay?"
"Grandma?"
"Grandma Gretchen. She is your mommy's mommy."
"Oh."
It was bitterly cold and not for the first time he wondered at the prudence of bringing Elizabeth with him. But the thought that Kathryn wanted to see her daughter was enough to sway him and brave the icy temperatures. He had wrapped her up warmly in a thick soft blanket over her warm clothing and still he could feel her shivering. It was just a short walk from the transport to Gretchen Janeway's apartment and already he could feel the cold in his marrow.
Now he approached her front door and his heart lurched wildly. He had never seen Gretchen and his earlier vid-com communication was his first sight of her, an older replica of Kathryn. He remembered their conversation with grave embarrassment, wondering how he could have been made a villain in this saga. Gretchen had shown her antagonism three days ago.
"My daughter is dying. What do you want, Chakotay?"
"Only that she wanted to see our daughter Elizabeth," he said, wondering how the woman's anger could bounce off the screen and hit him square between the eyes.
"You are the source of her woes. You and – and the little girl."
"She told you about Elizabeth?"
"She didn't. More's the pity. Her former crew spoke about the child, yes. All except the father of her child. And let me tell you: what they said about my daughter, they weren't very flattering things. Every damned crewman and officer of Voyager took great pleasure in telling everyone with a willing ear what an unbelievably unfeeling, uncaring woman my daughter was in giving away her baby."
Her censure was palpable. What was he supposed to do? Reclaim Kathryn as the mother of Elizabeth, then leave for Dorvan? He never even thought of doing it primarily because Kathryn had been so adamant about keeping out of Elizabeth's life. Now, the slow dawning that Sarah might have had something do to with Kathryn's decision brought the nausea close to the surface again. Kathryn, God help him if she could still live before breathing her last, would know just what went on...
"Look, I am only bringing my daughter – "
"Her daughter…"
He sighed. What was it with them? he wondered idly as he remained standing in the cold facing the closed front door thinking about that conversation with Gretchen. Suddenly they were staking Kathryn's claim, something he had been so damned angry about acknowledging. Seven had said the same thing to him.
So had Sarah Hargreaves on Dorvan, more times than he could remember.
"Her daughter," he relented. "I'm bringing Elizabeth to her. She wishes to see…her daughter."
"You're not asking after Kathryn? What kind of man are you?"
He hadn't wanted to, afraid of what he'd hear. Seven had shocked the life out of him and it rattled him still, eroded the anger that had been his master for so long. Eroded and finally, after a night of tossing and turning, of walking in the total darkness that typified Dorvan's nights, to the habak in a quest to find peace, laid bare his feelings. He returned, stripped of his anger, stripped of everything that had kept him from contacting Kathryn again and going on his knees before her and insisting that she was the best person ever to mother her little child. His pride, his warped sense of honour that made Sarah Hargreaves's generosity the only thing he could accept during the pregnancy, his bitterness at raising his daughter without a mother after all, the old hesitance to face Kathryn's implacability - all of it gone.
He had been unmanly.
He didn't want to love Kathryn. After what she had done to him he never wanted to look at her again and feel as if his very guts were ripped from him. He never wanted to hear her mellowed voice again and flounder anchorless in a raging ocean with no hope of being rescued except by her. They had come together, the circumstances of that union leaving little to be proud of for they had both been too intoxicated to consider the consequences of their actions. But he had loved her.
Now Kathryn lay dying and he remembered the occasions he had despaired as she lay on Voyager's biobed, dying. He had turned cold inside, cold as the Steppes of Siberia with fear. If he ever wished bad fortune on Kathryn Janeway, he had given her enough of it, but he swore that wishing her dead had never in creation been part of any of his thinking processes, his meandering into anger and disappointment at what happened more than three years ago. At the back of his mind, and more and more in recent months, Kathryn had been in his mind constantly. Wishing her dead? Never. She was the mother of his child.
After Seven's revelation, how could he not love Kathryn still?
"I love her, Mrs Janeway. I – I don't want her to die…"
He had seen how a tear rolled down Gretchen's cheek.
"Please, bring Elizabeth…" she said, her voice a plea, yet strangely filled with awe.
"Thank you…"
"Papa…"
The door opened even as he was still silently repeating that 'thank you' of days ago. Gretchen Janeway stood there, a grey-haired gentleman hovering just behind her.
"Oh, my poor baby!" she crooned as she held out her arms to take the child.
Elizabeth had stopped wriggling, peeped from under the blanket at Gretchen's face, then looked like a completely scared doe. Gretchen stepped quickly into the warm depths of the apartment, clutching the child to her.
"Don't stand there in the cold, Chakotay. Come inside," she said and he thought he heard Kathryn's voice they way she ordered her crew about.
What of Kathryn? Why weren't they at the hospital? Did she die after all?
So he followed Gretchen inside. She had removed the blanket, seated herself in the largest sofa he ever saw and held Elizabeth on her lap. Elizabeth stared at her wide-eyed, scared. He grimaced. His daughter had never been showered by a stream of friendliness. It unnerved her and she started crying. The grey-haired gentleman stood next him and he shrugged. Chakotay wanted to take the child from Gretchen, but the man's hand held him back, indicating that Gretchen knew what she was doing.
"Gretchen has forgotten her manners, Captain Chakotay. I am – "
"Admiral Ponsonby."
"I see you have done your homework."
"Elizabeth needs to know what she's up against," Chakotay said, his voice changed to softness as they watched Gretchen calm the distressed child who strangely didn't reach for him but remained in her grandmother's warm, soft hug. And why not? The moment he decided to return to Earth, he had shown Elizabeth pictures of Gretchen Janeway and mostly, of her mother. The child had stared entranced at pictures of Kathryn.
"The best, I can tell you that. Leave it to her grandmother…"
And he did. Gretchen crooned, offered solace, wiped the tears from Elizabeth's cheeks, kissed her forehead, her cheeks, stroked her long, golden brown hair. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips rosy red from the warmth that had crept into her again.
"There, there, my little angel. It's only me, your grandma. I'm here, shhh… Don't worry, my angel… See? There's your daddy standing and that gentleman standing next to him is your grandpa. Not your grandpa by blood, mind you, but you'll get the idea soon enough. The man's a real teddy bear, if you ask me."
And Elizabeth had stopped her crying, making Chakotay wonder at how easily she had settled in her grandmother's lap and obviously not minding remaining there. He wanted to ask about Kathryn, afraid to contact the hospital, not wanting to hear that she was dead or almost dead. His heart hammered. He was impatient too, but his daughter needed comfort. They weren't saying anything. He was concerned. He had to take her to see her mother. That was why he came back to Earth, wasn't it? So why were they so unperturbed?
"Adam, get Elizabeth's toy, will you?" Gretchen ordered.
That was when he looked really properly into Gretchen's eyes as she gazed at her husband. How had he missed it earlier? The same fear he experienced was there, lurking in her eyes. Fear and sorrow and pending doom. They tried to hide it well, Kathryn's mother and stepfather. For the child, for him, he supposed they put up a magnificent pretence of acting as though Kathryn would walk into their home any moment, healthy as always.
Only now he noticed the unmistakable signs of sleepless nights, keeping a vigil. He realised they must have been sent home to rest.
Adam turned to him with a mock pained expression in his eyes and dipped quickly out of the lounge. A minute later he was back, carrying a large white teddy bear. Elizabeth's eyes lit up, the tears gone, her red mouth gasping in wonder as she saw the toy, her arms instinctively reaching to receive it. A broad smile changed her features like he hadn't seen it in a very long time.
"Is this for me?" she asked, her little voice breathless.
"It's a lady teddy bear, sweetheart," her grandmother replied, looking at the men as if to challenge them to refute her statement. "And, you can give her a name…"
"Teddy bears don't have names," Elizabeth replied.
"Oh, that's right. When you buy them, they leave it to you to give a name."
"Oh."
"So?"
"Katie."
They didn't ask her how she knew, and he had only given her mother's full name. Elizabeth had taken it and made her own endearment. Maybe the time was right at last to tell them of Elizabeth's middle and last names. Gretchen's eyes filled with tears and she turned, mouthing her own 'thank you' to him.
If he had never known what it was to be a typical child, he was seeing it now.
He closed his eyes and it didn't matter to him that they were watching him. It didn't matter anymore. Elizabeth was home.
Perhaps not completely, for she needed to see her mother. For the first time since her birth, his little girl was surrounded by her mother's loving parents, by the warmth of their unconditional affection. A hand touched his shoulder and he opened his eyes. Gretchen stood in front of him, her eyes full of compassion. For a moment he thought he saw Kathryn, on Voyager, in one of those moments when she offered solace to a grieving crewman.
"Somewhere," Gretchen Janeway said with heartbreaking sorrow in her voice, "there is an explanation for all of this, Chakotay."
"Yes…"
"Then go to her, son. Go to my little girl who has lost the will to fight her illness. Go to her and give her reason to live again…"
"Elizabeth…"
"We will follow. Don't worry, she is safe with us."
"I never doubted that for a second," he said, feeling a measure of relief for the first time in almost four years.
**********
END PART TWO