PART TWO
Carina sat on the edge of the bed, watching her father breathe evenly as he lay asleep. Soon after she and her aunt returned from the caves, he had gone into a spastic rage again and it had taken all her resolve and courage to quieten him. He had raged at them, shouted abuse, cursed, flung her away from him so hard that she fell against the floor.
"Papa!"
Her father had looked at her with bemused, dazed eyes, the extreme wildness temporarily abated. Finally, he had relented, holding out his arms to her in a pleading gesture. Once again, tricked by how repentant he looked, she had thrown herself in his arms. Then there had been quiet for about half an hour before he began to rage again.
She had refused to give up or give in to tears. Her aunt had done all she could even after she too had been pushed away. Together they helped calm him. Her aunt had produced a hypospray and before her father could react, she had administered the sedative.
Aunt Shauneez had given a great big sigh and stepped away from the bed, smiling at Carina's surprise.
"I took it from the med-kit in the bathroom. I'm going to lie down for a while, Carina. He'll be alright for the next twelve hours. You should rest too. Then we can talk about moving your dad, okay?"
She had nodded mutely and watched in silence as her aunt left the room. Then she began her lonely vigil again. She loved her father, loved him to distraction. He would heal someday and then he would look at her once more with love in his eyes. She so much wanted him to love her. Carina knew her physical appearance didn't help. She looked like Annika Hansen, had grown taller in the last year. Why couldn't her father forgive her for looking like her mother? The questions had confounded her since she was old enough to sense something wasn't right between her parents. In her heart of hearts she knew that her father loved her, if only he could see her and not her mother.
From time to time she wiped her father's brow, her fingers lingering over the tattoo. It was a tattoo her cousins also wore. She loved her cousins, especially Tomaso who was fifteen and wanted to attend Starfleet Academy.
Sighing, Carina remembered how her mother forbade her to talk about the Academy, and so she had suppressed all hope of one day being a Starfleet cadet. It had confused her then, and it had been the reason she hadn't spoken to her father of her dreams. Her mother had been clever, but as an ex-Borg. Carina understood that much of her mother's brilliance was not so much what she was born with, but what she had assimilated during her years as a Borg drone.
Her father had looked at her one day after she returned from school and looked at the PADD containing her assignments. It was a strange look, so strange that it had made her uncomfortable. It was just before her mother died. Annika Hansen had been on a mission to the Anakrapos System. It had been the first time she could relax in the company of her father. Yet that day while he studied her science assignment, it was different.
"You remind me of her…" he had said, very enigmatically.
"You always tell me I remind you of Mama…" she had told him, smiling tentatively, hoping it would break his own cheerless expression, feeling wretched inside because he had always looked so unhappy when he told her she reminded him of her mother.
"No, not Mama, Carina."
"Then who, Papa?"
Then the look had lingered until he turned away from her, staring out the window for what seemed to her like ages. Always when he had done that, he looked so far away. She had known then that it would be futile to break into his reverie and demand answers. In any case, she had always accepted that her father's thoughts were private, not to be breached. But on those days when he stared into the distance, his mind and heart far away, he had looked unhappy.
Now her father lay asleep. It didn't fool her. He would fly into a rage again when he woke up and she knew how dangerous it could be to keep him continuously sedated. It wasn't going to heal him anyway.
When Chakotay began moving his head from side to side in restless agitation, it brought her back to the present. His mouth moved and instantly she had a sponge ready and held it to his parched lips. He sucked thirstily before pushing her hand away again, the agitated movement continuing.
"Kathryn…" he whispered in his troubled slumber. "Kathryn…"
Carina frowned. She had never ever heard her father mention such a name before. It was new, strange to her. She knew that a Kathryn Janeway had been the captain of the starship Voyager. Her mother, though, had always discouraged her from studying Voyager's data and logs. She hadn't bothered further because her mother had become sullen and unfriendly and non-communicative for days afterwards.
Chakotay murmured again, "Kathryn…" before he became still again.
She should ask her aunt about it, Carina thought. But how much did Aunt Shauneez know?
Who was this Kathryn? Why did her father murmur her name as if it were the most treasured name in the universe? She had never heard such a tone from him before. The name fell from his lips like a caress, like one would speak to a beloved.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to involve her aunt after all. Carina had no idea how much or how little her aunt knew. If she admitted it to herself, she didn't want to be disappointed. Her father murmured a name that to her young mind sounded as if he knew this person well, very well. She had always felt that there was no love between her parents and her father's behaviour, especially the last few years, had always struck her as odd. Gazing out the window, so far away in his thoughts that she didn't want to call him for dinner, or disturb him when she had homework.
Since her mother died, there were no pictures displayed of her in their home, even though her father had encouraged her to have pictures of Annika Hansen in her own bedroom. She didn't blame her father. Not really. The times he had come into her room to kiss her goodnight, he always seemed to avoid the framed photograph she kept of her mother. Annika Hansen, aloof, beautiful, the cortical implants enhancing her aloofness. She missed her mother sometimes, but even that memory began to fade because there was nothing to stimulate or trigger memories of her mother as a loving being, one who tucked her in at night, one who listened to her stories of school or excursions. And her father didn't do any better in keeping memories of her mother alive for her.
The name 'Kathryn' had fallen from his lips like a lost treasure, she thought. Yes, exactly as if he had lost something very precious to him.
A sudden thought struck her. When she had been about eight or nine years old… No, she decided, it was soon after her eighth birthday when her father had returned from vacation. Every year he always went alone somewhere, never telling them where he was although with hindsight, she realised that her mother must have known. They always argued when he returned.
She had hidden herself in the wardrobe of her parents' bedroom, playing hide and seek with her cousins. It was a perfect hiding place because she knew they would never come looking for her there. In the darkness she pressed against an object. That was when she had noticed the wooden box. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness and it appeared like a mysterious shadow. Intrigued by the encrypted lock, she had lifted the box and placed it on her lap, trying, young as she had been then, to decrypt the lock. Maybe it had been that the door of the cupboard hadn't been closed completely, but a sliver of light that seeped through helped her to see what she was fiddling with.
Carina had heard footsteps and the next moment the door of the wardrobe was flung open. The whoosh of air that entered the cavity where she had been sitting cross-legged made her realise that she could have smothered inside the cupboard. She remembered how hard her heart had pounded. It was her father who had found her after Tomaso and Nina had alerted her parents that they couldn't find her anywhere.
And Chakotay had been beyond angry. His eyes were ablaze, his lips compressed as he had stared at her for several minutes without saying a word. Up until that moment she had never seen her father angry and never ever had his anger been directed at her, at those times that she heard her parents argue. And for years she had wondered about that. It had teased her in the first months, but with the resilience of a young child, the incident had slipped from her memory, only to be recalled when she heard her father raise his voice. Then it came back, each time fuzzier than the previous occasion.
Carina closed her eyes at the memory of that day. It came back like a bright flash of lightning. Clearly, seeing herself sitting there in the wardrobe, her legs crossed with the wooden box on her lap. She had been puzzled by her father's anger, puzzled and afraid, not realising how close to danger she had been. Chakotay standing there as if he had wanted to strike her, his hands trembling in his anger, clenching into fists. He had not spoken a single word, but simply taken the box from her, placed it back in its niche, then pulled her out. She had looked on in silence as he closed the door of the cupboard and then pointed to where Tomaso and Nina were waiting for her. Never afterwards had she ventured to look inside his wardrobe again. The box had been forgotten.
Now it struck her with the force of a tornado as she realised after so many years, that his anger had not been because she could possibly have died in his wardrobe. It was because she had the box on her lap, about to try and force it open.
It was because of the box that he had been enraged.
Touching her father's cheek very gently, Carina leaned forward and kissed his brow.
"Kathryn…" he murmured again, his voice infinitely sad.
Carina felt her eyes prick with tears. She turned her head towards the wardrobe, wondering if the box was still there. That incident had happened on Dorvan. Here on Polarya…
Suddenly tired of thinking, Carina rose quietly from the bed and tiptoed to the cupboard, her heart racing with anticipation. She opened the door, bent low down and stuck her hand inside. She bit her lip to prevent herself from crying out when her hand made contact with something solid, smooth.
When she pulled the box carefully out, she stifled a gasp. It was polished wood, so dark and beautiful, and although she had no idea what kind of wood it was, her hand caressed the surface. A memory, sharp and distinct of her father holding the box, caressing the smooth, dark shiny wood just like she was doing now.
She turned to look at her father on the bed, giving a small sigh of relief that he didn't wake up. Knowing that he would be sleeping for several hours more, she picked up the box and quietly left Chakotay's room to make her way to her own bedroom. She sat down on her bed, her eyes stealing to the framed photograph of Annika Hansen. Her eyes pricked with tears as she touched her mother's face.
"I'm so sorry, Mama…but I believe this box contains all Daddy's happiness and it has to do with Voyager's captain…"
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Carina stared at the photograph, had been staring at it for several minutes. Her fingers trembled as they held on to the gilt frame. A woman's face, full of laughter, joyous, beautiful, stared back at her. It was as if the woman's eyes met hers, that if she had been standing right there in front of Carina, she would have looked just like that. Her eyes smiled.
She had never before felt that eyes could smile, but it was in this woman. Eyes that mirrored her soul.
Was this what her father had seen, staring out his window into the distance? A memory of this face? It was a stranger's face to her. She was positive that she had never seen this woman, had never seen even pictures of her, had never bothered to try again after her own mother dressed her down about attempting to decrypt their codes on Voyager's files. This woman was to her a perfect stranger. Carina had been to several cities on other worlds, had walked among a throng of people and if this stranger had walked past, she would not have paused to stop, for there was no recognition.
A perfect stranger. The woman whose name her father murmured in his sleep, a woman of whom, Carina was now convinced, her father dreamed night after night. The face of a woman who now troubled her father's sleep, who was the source - the beginning and the end, if there ever was to be an end - of her father's descent into madness. A woman who joined all the other demons of his dark, dark world and who refused to leave.
It was only a picture. A picture of Kathryn Janeway who was the captain of the legendary starship Voyager. What few stories she knew about Voyager and its crew and their exploits had been told her by Tomaso. Tomaso who had the privilege to gain insight into the world of a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, traveling for seven long years to find its way home under the leadership of Captain Janeway and…her father.
A stranger's face.
Yet, mysteriously as only the deeply mysterious could be, Carina experienced the oddest sensation. It felt to her as if she knew this woman into whose face smiled back. She looked at Kathryn Janeway through the sheen of tears that had never stopped forming in her eyes.
"I know her…" she murmured softly, even as her rational mind told her that it couldn't be. Her young heart warmed instantaneously, subconsciously to the smiling face in the picture. She traced the outline of Kathryn's face, as if she could caress the smooth skin which she imagined, felt intuitively, must be created out of velvet softness.
Carina gave a little sniff as she tried to hold back her tears. Her heart had stopped its wild pounding and settled into a lower pulsating as she put the picture down. There were other items in the wooden box, but the framed picture had lain on top of everything. Now she lifted a chronometer, an ancient timepiece held on a gold chain. Another item, a rose - pale yellowish-orange - encased in glass was the next to be taken out.
Then her hands stilled. At the bottom was something she had seen perhaps only once or twice. Her father had introduced her to books and her favourite book of fairytales was bound in leather. She treasured that book and knew that she would never ever give it away, that if she had a daughter herself, one day, that child would inherit it. Very, very carefully Carina lifted the leather-bound book out of the box.
On the cover, embossed in gold letters was the name 'Kathryn Janeway'.
Clutching the book to her bosom, Carina replaced the other objects in the box, closed it and then settled on her bed, sitting cross-legged as she always liked to sit and opened the book. She gasped.
On the first page there was a photograph of her father who smiled. He smiled! She had not seen her father smile much and she had never heard him laugh. His face was open, so clear, and his hair was cropped like she remembered, not the long, straggly locks he had now.
Beneath the picture were the words, "A journal of summer".
Eager to read what it contained, for she believed implicitly that reading the journal would lead to her father's recovery and peace, Carina turned the page.
My dearest Chakotay
I don't know if I should be happy or sad that you asked me not to enquire after your little daughter. I know, I know! But she'll be eight years old soon and I wish with all my heart that I could give her a little gift. Your wife will not approve, but I did get her something, you know! And no, it's a secret. Maybe one day. My heart remains heavy even as I listen to your breathing. I can't shake it off, but I told myself that you took the trouble to come all the way to Earth, to beautiful Venice in summer and that more than makes up for everything right now.
It's our seventh summer of stolen kisses in the moonlight. I cannot help what is between us, my love. But I'm guided and overwhelmed by your assurances that we claim this summer for ourselves. My conscience, as you know, tells me we should stop this, but my heart is tied in knots around yours and I cannot untie it, Chakotay. It's so hard that any thought of relieving you and freeing myself is too difficult to contemplate. When I lie in your arms and feel your kisses on me, all rational thought makes way for the answering of the heart to the matters of the heart.
But I want to be happy, even if it's only for a week. It's wrong of us to deceive your wife and your daughter, but please, God, let me be happy just this one time in the year?
Today the blessed, healing sun joined us in our happiness. Venice has never looked more beautiful or more conspiratorial. I'm sure it winked at us! You laughed and I told you scientists sometimes take a leap of faith. I walked with you across the Piazza San Marco feeling I'm walking on air. The months of waiting for you are over and now I can enjoy the little period of grace. To be with the man I love.
"What are you feeding the birds, my love?" you asked today.
"Definitely not bread crumbs. They deserve the bounty of full meals!" I replied.
You laughed and your laughter sounded like the bell in the Great Tower, pealing freely for all Venice to hear.
I look at your sleeping figure, so relaxed in sleep, so without the toils and care of the world. And so I end this day, closing my journal, knowing that minutes from now your body will lie close to mine and I will hear your words once again, "Are you happy, my love?"
By the time Carina had finished reading the first entry the tears were streaming down her face. She couldn't see the pages clearly anymore and when she put the book down and had brushed the wetness from her cheeks, she went to stand by her window.
She remembered how she'd read somewhere that some people were fortunate to have second chances, that they were even more fortunate to have experienced a first, great love. She knew now that Captain Kathryn Janeway was her father's first, great love and that her father had never stopped loving the woman who was missing from his life.
A germ of an idea formed in her head. She turned quickly to check if the journal was still lying on her bed. The absence of noise from her father's room was evidence that he was still asleep. Aunt Shauneez was also still resting. She hurried back to the bed and carefully picked up the journal again, her fingers lingering over the embossed letters of Kathryn Janeway's name.
"I must get in touch with Tomaso…" she said dreamily. "I know now how my father can be cured…"
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END PART TWO