Caretaker - L. A. Graf [44]
"The crew will not benefit from the leadership of an exhausted captain," Tuvok pointed out with his traditional patience.
Janeway couldn't help but smile, just a little. "You're right.
As usual." She sat back in her seat and sighed up at him. "I've missed your counsel, Tuvok."
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. "I am gratified that you came after me so I can offer it once again."
It was so close to a Vulcan admission of feelings, Janeway wasn't entirely sure what to say. She'd once read a quote from a famous admiral that said, "Friendship with a Vulcan is like sculpting with radioisotopes. Very few people ever try it, and the ones who do have a hard time explaining how the milliseconds of closeness when it all comes together can make such an experiment worthwhile." Sometimes, staring into the darkness of Tuvok's calm expressions, Janeway found herself thinking that the admiral should have warned her that those daring few who forged friendships with Vulcans didn't exactly choose to follow that path--it happened without your planning in the first millisecond flash when you looked into a Vulcan's eyes and realized that he understood that you had feelings, and vice versa.
Caught by her own overlong silence, Janeway said, "I spoke to your family before I left."
A human would have reacted. Tuvok only asked, "Are they well?"
"Well," Janeway told him. "But worried about you."
One of many Vulcan nonexpressions--most of which stood in for more human displays of annoyance, disgust, or impatience--ghosted across Tuvok's face. "That would not be an accurate perception, Captain.
Vulcans do not `worry."" Or feel gratitude. "They miss you," she amended.
That seemed to suit him better, although what passed through his eyes was a simple tenderness Janeway wasn't accustomed to seeing there. "As I do them."
"I'll get you back to them." The statement blurted out of her, as unexpected and honest as Vulcan friendship, and Janeway felt the words burrowing in to stay even as she spoke them. "That's a promise, Tuvok."
He accepted it as stoically as he would any other truth. Janeway smiled wearily, and watched as the Vulcan nodded his good-night and retreated through the ready-room door. Now if only she could believe herself so easily.
Chapter 11
Five hours later, she was no closer to belief--or sleep--than when Tuvok first left the ready room.
I probably should have gone back to my quarters. Even a starship's bunk was more comfortable than a couch that Janeway suspected was constructed more for the sake of its appearance than for its usefulness. But her quarters held what was left of her unpacked luggage, the two articles of civilian clothing she had brought to remind her of autumn back home, the pictures of Mark and darling Bear.
She'd learned long ago that while guilt can be a great motivator, it can also be a great destroyer--it thrived on stolen energy.
An innate awareness of this fact no doubt had something to do with why, somewhere between shutting down the screens and killing the lights last night, she'd been overwhelmed with the conviction that a return to her quarters would somehow represent a surrender. That by going to bed the way she would have on any other day of her career, she was accepting that this was how she would be going to bed from now on--that this was where she would be going to bed, with no hope of ever seeing a real home again.
So she'd stretched out on the hard, aesthetically pleasing gray couch and draped one arm across her eyes, and told herself that she was just being efficient by sleeping so close to the bridge.
In case she was needed.
Five hours into her nonsleep vigil, she knew that there were seven primary welds in the ready-room ceiling, and that the bridge air-recirculation system turned on an average of twice every hour.
I should have gone down to sickbay and had that holographic medical program anesthetize me.
She should have made sure