Quantum Possibilities
by ragpants, © July 2001

****
A rose is a rose is a rose.

Unless it's an genetically recreated one.

****

Kathryn Janeway sits in The Quantum Cafe with her eyes closed and lets the sensations pour over her. Sounds. Smells. Textures. The slight touch of a breeze on the back of her neck whenever the door opens, bringing in the faint smell of hot, summer pavement, bruised grass and the cool distant tang of the ocean.

It feels....real. Even the gravity is perfect. She holds out her hand and her muscles react. This is Earth's gravity.  One-oh standard. Not Bajor's .982.  Or Betazed's 1.03. Or any of the other places she's been. She was born on Earth, grew up there. Her body remembers. She lowers her arm and the harsh grabbiness of artificial gravity fails to clutch at her.

 It is perfect. Too perfect. It is too easy to forget this isn't real. And too dangerous.

Footsteps halt beside her table and she opens her eyes to see Chakotay standing there. He looks relaxed, more at ease than she can remember seeing him in a very long time. But it's only early evening and she is surprised that he is here, with her.

She looks up at him slantwise. "Said your good-byes to Archer already?" she asks. The question comes out sounding coy, though she doesn't mean it to be.

"Well, you did say to be home early...."

For a moment she is paralyzed. It was a joke. She'd meant that as joke. She'd never presume to command his personal life. Then she notices. His eyes are twinkling madly and his left dimple semaphores some secret message as he tries to keep his grin from spreading across his face. He's teasing her.

Without asking, Chakotay slides into the chair opposite her at the table and flags the waiter for a drink. "Actually I think she was in a hurry to get home. She said something about being glad to be out of this 'unstable bipedal body.'"

Kathryn picks up her glass. It's filled with a cloudy pale blue and faintly iridescent liquid.  She salutes him with it. "Here's to getting home."

Chakotay returns her toast.

Kathryn leans forward, comfortable,  her elbows on the table and the heels of her boots hooked over the rung of her stool. She gestures around the room, the stem of her glass pinched tightly between her thumb and index finger. "Does it look like you remember?" She watches as he cranes his head around the room, taking in the undistinguished, long white bar, the bland chrome and glass tables, the black leatherette upholstery. He does not look at the faces of the crowd that is beginning to fill the room.

"Pretty much," he concedes. "You?"

A faint shiver passes over her body. She tells herself that it's a momentary draft, nothing more, but she knows she's lying. The setting may be perfect, but the familiar faces, the faces she knows and knows don't belong here, give her the creeps. "Pretty much."

A silence lingers between them, awkward. Neither is quite sure what to say. Kathryn wonders if this is a foretaste of their homecoming.

Her eyes shift restlessly about the room, finally coming to rest on the familiar shape of a man's back. It's Harald Hjarlmarsen, she realizes with a slight start, her cadet commander from her first year at the Academy. Last she'd heard he was captaining the Bold Venture on patrol along the Romulan Neutral Zone. He's changed, she thinks. The wheat gold hair has tarnished and receded and there are lines of tension and worry limned around his eyes.  His shoulders have rounded, as if bowed by some unseen burden. He looks far older than his age. And tired. So very tired. She wonders if she has fared as badly.

"....what?" She realizes that Chakotay has said something to her and that she missed it. She shakes her head as he repeats it, now unable to hear him over the droning double bass and percussion line of the Martian synth rock that suddenly pours out of hidden speakers. She laughs and shakes her head again as she leans forward, grabbing Chakotay's wrist and pulling him toward her. "I don't remember *this*?" she shouts over the din.

He shakes his head and shouts back into her ear. "Me either. Must have started after our time."

Our time? There had never been a time when they had been at the Quantum together. She never laid eyes upon him until the day she saw him at the Caretaker's farm.... No, that's not what he means, she thinks. He means their era. Their period of youth. With synth throbbing loudly around her, Kathryn suddenly feels old.

Chakotay gulps the rest of his drink and slides from his seat, holding his hand out to her. He nods toward the door. Yes, let's go, she agrees without words. She lays her hand on his chest, a signal to wait while she finishes her juka daiquiri. Beneath her palm, his heart pounds in seeming time with the music.

He holds her arm just above the elbow and guides her in front of him. Kathryn starts to object, but another wild rhythm swells around them. The crowd sways and they are separated by an eddy of moving people. She stands on tiptoes, seeking Chakotay's face among the multitude, and is nearly  knocked off her feet.

The young lieutenant who bumped into her apologizes obsequiously when he sees her Captain's pips and steadies her until he sure she won't fall, then moves on. She catches a glimpse of Chakotay's tattoo among the milling press of bodies and points to the cafe's entrance. She'll meet him there.  He nods and begins his own eel through the throng of people.

Kathryn steps outside and the solid wave of noise recedes. Slightly deafened, she holds her hands over her ears to block out all sounds. Now all she can hear is the dull roar of ocean surf inside her head. An arm circles around her waist and she is yanked forward. She stumbles three steps to keep from falling and begins to round on whoever is manhandling her. Chakotay's face appears in her vision and before she can complain he jerks his head toward a point behind him. A stream of chattering and laughing newly minted ensigns pour out the entry, some walking backwards and none paying any particular attention to where they are going. They would have walked right over her, she realizes. She squeezes Chakotay's biceps and nods her thanks.

"Want to go someplace else?" Chakotay asks when the mob of junior officers has passed. "There's a Vulcan nightclub just down the street." He turns in the direction that the youngsters have just gone. "It's not real....."

For a beat, she thinks he is making a philosophical statement about this alien simulation, this ersatz San Francisco. But he's just telling her the club isn't a Vulcan club, despite the trappings.

She'd like another drink, but not if it means swimming through that sea of noisy children.  Regretfully, she shakes her head. "Let's just walk." And when he reaches down to take her hand, she lets him.

For about a dozen paces, she lets the warmth of his palm caress hers, but then she loosens her fingers and allows her hand slip away from his, pausing only to caress his knuckles in mute apology. She can't do this. It's too dangerous. Too confusing. Already fact and fantasy blur and overlap. The now reverberates with the prescience of the future and deja vu of the past.

Beside her she thinks she hears Chakotay sigh, but the sound is snuffed before she can be sure and it may  only be it's an artifact of her returning hearing.

They walk, going nowhere, seeking nothing, except the luxury of the moment.

Eventually she realizes that she has been unconsciously guiding them, choosing this path over that one, and this left over that right, moving away from the bustle and bright lights of town toward the Academy's grounds. They are nearly at the marching field, a vast expanse of lush and manicured bluegrass, neatly clipped and edged precisely all around, where the cadets practice formation drill. She's put her hours in here. She is sure that Chakotay has too.

He snorts amusement as he recognizes where they are. She guides him to one of the park benches, using the pressure of her shoulder against his.  They sit side by side like an old married couple who take each other's company for granted.  "You have fond memories of this place?" he asks with genuine curiosity under a faint veneer of disbelief.

She smiles in the dark. "Actually, I do," she answers, "but probably not the kind you're thinking of. See the lights over there?" She points towards the dark low slung outline of a building across the quad. "That's Sloan Hall, the science library. I had a carrel there where I used to go to study every day. When the library closed for the night and the very unsympathetic librarian evicted all the students, I used to walk across this field on my way back to the dorm. I'd stop here, sit and listen to the night sounds. I always found it peaceful, quiet. The one place where I wasn't Admiral Janeway's daughter."

It feels right to tell him this now, here, with the cicadas buzzing their love songs in the trees and the oceanward breeze soughing down from the hills. The still warm night air smells of dust and chaparral and memories. A trace of that former peace whispers into her soul.and some of the burden of worry and command she carries inside her heart eases just a little.  Kathryn looks back across the green. "Did you have a favorite place when you were here?"

Chakotay stretches his arms along the back of the bench and leans back to gaze at the stars for a moment. "Yeah, I did. Maybe I'll show it to you." He drops his head down. "But about the only memories I have of that...." He points one finger toward the field and waggles it back and forth. "...is marching punishment picket."

Kathryn spurts laughter.

"When I first arrived at the Academy, I had a 'poor attitude toward authority,'" Chakotay explains and Kathryn can hear the quotation marks in his voice.

"And you don't now?" she says, not bothering to check her humor. She's been his superior for five years now. She knows how easily he argues, how unwilling he is to restrain his opinions.

Chakotay screws up his face in an approximation of contrition, but he only succeeds in looking chagrined.  She understands him all too well.

She taps him on the knee. "We have to leave." Thinking she means they need to return to the ship, Chakotay reaches for his commbadge, but she stops him.  She rests one hand on his shoulder and points with the other toward a shadow across the quad. A lone cadet strides with precise and measured steps along the far walkway, faltering when he realizes someone sits on the far side of the field. "This place is theirs, not ours," she explains, unsure if she referring to the alien dopplegangers who have built this artificial Earth or the students who have succeeded them at the Academy.  " I think he wants one last look. We ought to let him have it."

They leave, walking once more side by side in the almost dark. The moon is only half full, but between its pale silver glow and the stars, there is light enough.  They wander the deserted margins of the Academy's grounds and  gradually Kathryn notices that Chakotay is leading her in particular direction much as she had earlier.

"Wait here." Chakotay hurries off, leaving Kathryn standing on the paving. On her right is a hedgerow with bushes so straight and evenly spaced that it has to be manmade. It rises above her head so she cannot see what lies beyond it. Chakotay ranges back and forth along the thicket like a hunting dog scenting a trail. He's looking for something, but she doesn't know what.

"Ah, here it is." He stops and leans headfirst into the bushes, hands pressed together in front of him like a diver poised on a diving board. Just before he disappears from sight, he turns and looks over his shoulder at her. "Aren't you coming?"

Kathryn presses through the bushes, her arms closed over her face to protect it from twigs that seem to resent her passage and try to gouge her eyes out. She steps through... and is stunned. She  didn't knew this was here. She stands on a promontory of land, a point about 40 feet wide that drops away on three sides to the Bay below. She can hear the waves breaking and foaming on the rocks beneath. To the left, the illuminated spiderweb of the Golden Gate Bridge gleams against the horizon, and to the right are the scattered diamond specks of San Francisco's lights. If this were Earth , one of those sparks would be her home, she thinks with a pang of homesickness.  Her wariness reasserts itself. This isn't real, she thinks. This isn't real. She repeats the words over and over inside her head like a prayer against temptation.

She closes her eyes against the reality of this place and wishes she could shut down her other senses too. The bitter briny scent of the sea and the shore and Chakotay's hair fills her nose and trickles down her palate. The light wind curls cool, damp fingers around her shoulders and pinches her nipples into peaks. The breakers whisper to her, telling her she's home.

Above her, the stars  glimmer in familiar patterns. Kathryn has a spacefarer's instinctive trust in the stars. She recalls childhood lessons, her father's sure hand engulfing hers, as they trace constellations in the Indiana sky. 'Trust the stars' he tells her. 'Trust the stars. They will always guide you home.'"

All her life she has placed her faith in the stars. She has always found answers in the stars: scientific discoveries that captivate her intellect; personal revelations that sooth her soul.  And now the treacherous stars lie to her, offering shimmering reassurances that she is home, when home is 35,000 light years away. Thirty-five years. A lifetime.

Another lie. Another breach of faith in world where nothing is genuine.

She opens her eyes. Chakotay stands a few feet away. The breeze has shifted and now blows in from the ocean, cool and damp, thick with the promise of fog before morning. Kathryn shivers a little and moves to stand a little closer to Chakotay.

"My favorite place, Kathryn," he explains before she can ask. "You showed me yours; I'm showing you mine."

His suggestive tone ought to make her blush, but it doesn't.

"I grew up in a desert. There are no large bodies of water on Dorvan. Oh, there're rivers and lakes, but nothing really of any size. Strange as it seems, I'd never seen an ocean until I stepped off the transport." She hears him chuff in the darkness. "I really was that much of rube once...." She hears sadness in voice. A lost innocence he mourns for. He has known loss and hurts. She frequently forgets this as she struggles with Voyager's day-to-day survival. Chakotay does not wear his pain, as Paris does, as a chip on his shoulder for everyone to see. Or as a snarl of easy anger like B'Elanna. He carries it tightly wrapped inside him like she does.

Like she does.

So many betrayals. So many failures and disappointments on this difficult journey home. Through it all, he has stood steadfast beside her, faithful and true. He is the one true thing in this world.

When she closes her eyes again,  the stars rearrange themselves inside her eyelids. The singular path she has always followed, always seen mapped out precisely before her in her stars, dissolves into a thousand intertangled threads. She now sees options where before none existed. Quantum possibilities shift and unravel into a myriad of choices.

The future beckons and she chooses. She chooses him.

She shivers from the dampness in the air and from the knowledge of her decision. Instinctively Chakotay lifts an arm and wraps it around her shoulders. She curls into his chest, sliding her free arm around his waist. Her breath heats the fabric of his jacket and it reflects back, warming her cheek like a caress. "You're real," she whispers. "This is real. This is possible." She looks up to see his brow pucker in confusion. He doesn't understand, but she does. She reaches up and grasps the back of his neck, pulling his lips down to meet hers.

At first, his mouth is gentle on hers, uncertain, wary of her unexpected actions, but the kiss quickly turns hot and greedy. Her hands trace the contours of his back, once, twice, then slip lower to cover the taut muscles of his ass. He pulls her fierce and hard against him and she can feel the vivid outline of his erection through his uniform.

This is her vision, her chosen future.  Kathryn eases her mouth away from his and reaches between them to unseal the front of her jacket. She drops her jacket on the ground, then her duty shirt and bra. Chakotay stand unmoving so she reaches over to release the seals on his jacket and pushes it off his shoulders. 'Yes' she tells him with her eyes and kisses him again.

Clothing falls like haphazard raindrops until she is naked. She stretches out for him on the cool grass, lifting her arms toward him, inviting. But Chakotay does not kneel to cover her. "Not like this, Kathryn" he tells her. "I want to see you and the stars together." He pulls her to her feet then sits on the ground. He helps her to straddle his thighs and, with one hand on the small of her back, he guides her down onto the waiting cock that he holds with his other. Now his hands slip along her ribs and under her breasts, tracing their contours, memorizing their softness.  His hands travel underneath her arms and he lifts them so she reaches toward the sky. "The stars," he whispers against the back of neck as he begins to move beneath her. "Reach for the stars, Kathryn. Take them. They're yours."

She turns her hands, palms up to the skies, and spreads her fingers wide to collect them. So many stars. So many possibilities. She feels them gather inside her, filling her, filling her over and over, forcing her open. They burn her with their fire. She is incandescent now, white hot and aflame. The starry inflorescence swells, expanding exponentially until she can't contain its power. She explodes, a supernova, lighting the night sky with the glory of her release.
 

****
Kathryn dreams. She dreams that of which she always dreams. She dreams of home. And danger. And duty.

****

It is cold. Her shoulders ache from being hunched against the ground and a strand of cobweb has plastered itself across her cheek. Kathryn reaches up to brush the sticky material away only to discover it her own hair, wet with dew. She opens her eyes. Around her fog swirls in the low places and twines like a cat  around the ankles of the bushes. The landscape has a unreal, ethereal appearance, like a dream. She is naked on the chilly, soaked grass, covered only by two duty jackets.

Hers. And Chakotay's.

Chakotay sits, fully dressed except for his jacket, about a meter from her head. He must be cold since he  hugs his legs against his chest. He rests his chin atop his fists doubled on his knees. He is staring out to sea, to the horizon where the slate blue of the morning sky meets the deep inky navy of the ocean. His face is open and he looks younger than she can recall. His eyes hold a wistful, hopeful look that must have been how he looked the first time he saw the sea. It makes her heart squeeze painfully with affection and regret.

"Where are my clothes?" He mouth is dry and her throat feels like she's been swallowing sand. Her question comes out sounding strangled and preemptory.

The innocence goes out Chakotay's eyes as he turns toward her. He nudges a neatly stacked pile just above her head with his toe. Her clothes have been gathered and carefully folded to prevent them from getting muddy or too damp from the dew. She knows this is not how she left them last night.

She means to say 'Thank you,' but he's already standing and has turned to give her privacy to dress.

She pulls on her clothes in silence.  As she slides one arm into her jacket, she closes her eyes and tries to summon the vision of the future she had last night, to see all the Heisenbergian possibilities. The vision will not come. Instead she can discern only the narrow path of duty, obedience and protocol she has always trod.  She feels momentarily staggered by the loss, but she shunts the pain aside as she prepares to resume the burden and isolation of command. She has dealt with worse. She is strong. She will survive. She must survive and see Voyager safely home. This is the vision of the future that has sustained her all these long, difficult years. This is the vision that will take her home.

 She seals the front of her jacket, then steps around to hand Chakotay's jacket back to him. She cannot meet his eyes and presses the jacket into his chest when he refuses to take it from her hands. The jacket falls to the ground when she steps away.

Sunrise pinks the eastern sky, but Kathryn is looking westward,  out towards the sea, her back to her temporary lover.  "You let me sleep," she accuses in the same tone she might chide him for failing to remind her of routine and unimportant meeting aboard the ship. "It's nearly dawn.  Didn't Boothsby say that they were going to begin deconstruction of the habitat at 0600?"

Chakotay nods dully. He stoops to retrieve his jacket from the ground.

"Then I believe it's time we get out of here, " she states crisply.

Chakotay's seals his jacket. He reaches for his commbadge and requests transport.  He comes to stand  beside and slightly behind Kathryn in proper transport formation. His face is determined, grim.

Kathryn feels his nearness on her left shoulder, a  shimmer of heat in the early morning cold. She needs to explain to him, to tell him.... but she isn't sure how or even what to say. She turns slightly toward him.  "Chakotay...."

"I know, Kathryn." His voice is carefully neutral, but it cannot hide the thick bitterness underneath. "I *know*."