Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [73]
He forced out the question. “Who are you?”
Kes’s brow furrowed and she cocked her head in confusion. “You know who I am, Neelix- “
“Say it!” he demanded fiercely, “Say your name! Tell me who you are!”
She padded over to him and took his hand. The touch of her skin sent an electric thrill through the Talaxian’s nerves. “I’m someone who cares about you, more than you will ever know.”
“You can’t be Kes,” he breathed, “Kes is gone, changed. She… left me.”
“I never left you,” said the Ocampa, “there’s a part of me that will always be connected to you, Neelix. You were my first love, and you opened my heart to the stars.”
The vibration returned, and this time it did not fade. Distantly, rocks ground against one another in a sullen rumble. It’s coming, Neelix told himself, and it’s too late to escape it.
“I miss you so much,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “I’m not going to get out of here alive, and I’ll never have the chance to tell you again.”
“Neelix, no- “
He shook his head. “I want you to be real. I want you to be Kes, but I can’t be sure…”
Kes ran her hands over his face, mirroring the touch he had given her before. “Yes, you can. You know Kes better than any living being.” Neelix looked into her blue eyes and felt like he was falling in love with her all over again. “What does your heart tell you?”
His eyes prickled. “I lied to you,” he told her, in a quiet and steady voice. “After what happened on Ilari…” Kes broke eye contact for a brief moment. It had been their third year on Voyager when the Ilarian warlord Tieran had perished in Kes’s arms, transferring his psychic essence to the Ocampa woman. Under Tieran’s presence, buried emotions had come to the surface in Kes and she had brought her relationship with Neelix to an abrupt end. “You told me you wanted to move on, to find your own path.”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to hurt you…. But it was the right thing to do.”
“Yes,” said Neelix, and then he broke away from her, “No. I won’t lie again. I told you then that it was all right, but that wasn’t true. It was never true.”
Confusion crossed her face. “I don’t understand.”
“I never told you the truth because I wanted you to be free, sweeting. I have always loved you, Kes. I never stopped loving you. When you told me you wanted to end it between us, it broke my heart. I kept hoping that it was that fiend Tieran, that it was just some remnant of his cruel personality left over, but I was wrong. I thought you would come back to me, but you didn’t.”
Tears formed in her eyes. “I never knew.”
“Of course not,” He tried and failed to keep any bitterness from his tone. “I made sure that nobody did. I buried my feelings deep.” He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Tuvok would be proud of me.”
Kes watched him with a mixture of pity and sadness. “Why didn’t you tell me? After all we’ve been though, we are still friends. You could have said- “
“Said what? I know you, Kes. If I had told you I wanted you to stay with me, what would you have done?”
She looked away again. “I would have stayed.”
“Yes. And you would have been sad, but still you would have stayed with me because it was what I wanted… and you would have hidden your sadness just like I hid mine.” He took her hands in his. “All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. When I first saw you in the Kazon camp… you were like some delicate orchid growing in a wasteland. I knew I had to take you away from all that. You deserved better.”
She blinked back a tear. “Oh, Neelix, my poor Neelix…”
“I let you go because that was what you wanted. You were happy. Even though it cut me like a knife every time I saw you laughing or smiling with someone else, or when I caught sight of you in a corridor… As long as you were happy, it was worth it.” He took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be honest with you.”
She smiled