Homecoming - Christie Golden [15]
He finally managed to reach them. “Seven, I’m so sorry,” he said. “If you’d let me know that you had changed your mind about coming—”
“It’s quite all right, Commander,” she said, chilling him with the formal title. “I changed my mind at the last minute. I had no wish to intrude upon your reunion with old friends.” Her eyes lingered on the slim, beautiful form of Sveta as she spoke.
He stared at her, his heart sinking. How could she possibly think that her presence would be an intrusion? Would he ever understand this complex woman?
Chakotay decided it was time to cut to the chase on this. Firmly but gently, in a manner that brooked no argument, he clasped Seven’s elbow.
“Excuse us for a moment,” he said to Janeway and the Doctor. Before she could protest, he had steered her away. “That had to be awful,” he said before she could [43] speak. “As I said, if you’d let me know you’d changed your mind, I could have helped prevent it somewhat.”
Her eyes were like chips of blue ice. “That is not necessary, Commander. It would appear that on Earth, I will need to learn to fight my own battles. I will not cower behind my—”
She closed her mouth, not finishing the sentence. What had she been going to say? “My lover”? “My friend”? “My commanding officer”?
He released his hold on her elbow. “Seven, this is me,” he said, softly. “Please don’t shut me out. I want to be there for you.”
She glanced away. “I know.”
“But you don’t want me there.” His voice was sad, but not surprised.
She looked back up at him. “Admiral Janeway said that you and I would get married in the future.”
He smiled. “You know, somehow that stuck in my mind.”
“But that was a future on Voyager. Not here.”
His smile faded. The ache in his heart pained him, but it also had a sense of inevitability about it. He didn’t want to hear any more, but she grimly pressed on, as if now that she had started, she had to say it all.
“Voyager was my collective. I knew I was safe there. I trusted all of you; I knew all of you. I could ... I could try to learn to love. But all that’s changed. We’ve returned to Earth. I’m a—an oddity.”
“Seven, that’s not true, you’re—”
“And I have to learn to find my place again. I knew who I was on Voyager. Here, I have no idea.”
[44] He took a deep breath. The irony didn’t escape him. He had cared for three women on Voyager—Seska, Janeway, and Seven of Nine. One was a madwoman, a traitor, whose “yes” had never been real. The second had told him “no” gently and sweetly, because they were together on Voyager. And the third was telling him “no” because they weren’t together on Voyager. It was kind of funny, in a painful way.
“Can’t win for losing,” he said ruefully, chuckling despite his hurt.
She frowned slightly. “I do not understand,” she said.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s okay, Seven. You’re right. You need to learn who you are, and you need to do that without me coming along for the ride.”
He wanted to kiss her one last time, but he felt the myriad eyes upon them. So he contented himself with gently stroking her cheek, smiled at her, and let her go.
B’Elanna was surprised at how small her father appeared to her. To her as a child, he had been such a large, comforting presence; and when he had gone, his absence had been even more enormous. Now he seemed to be just human-sized. Not a god, not a demon; just a man. She recalled a man with shiny black hair; now that hair, though still thick, was more gray than black. There were wrinkles around his face that did not jibe with her memories, and a stiffness to his movements that pained her to see.
Her father was growing old.
John Torres was still fit and healthy for his age, but she had not watched him grow older gradually. This was a startling change to B’Elanna, one that she had [45] glimpsed but not fully integrated when she had talked to him briefly on Voyager.