Faces. So many faces.
He stood still, trying desperately to hold onto the faces, the forms, as they slid past him. They eddied around him like waves against the shore. They passed him without a second glance. Their minds were somewhere beyond him, their worlds unconnected to his.
His mind, his world was dying. She was dying.
No. He couldn't think of that. He could not permit himself to despair.
He scanned the room with desperate eyes. His senses betrayed him; his mind betrayed him. He saw her everywhere, in the curve of a neck, the flash of a smile, the sway of a walk. He latched onto the illusion, but the moment he would move to follow, she would disappear like a ghost, and he would find himself staring into the face of a stranger.
How many? They moved too swiftly to track, an elemental force that trapped him, held him captive. Like quicksilver, they swirled around him, their elaborate costumes hiding their identities. So many. So very many, and any one of them could be her, sheltered by fabric, feather, leather, lace. He didn't know which mask hid her, but there were too many masks to see.
Kathryn. Where, in this mass, was she?
Too many bodies. They left him vulnerable. He wanted to scream, to call out her name, but he knew the sound would be lost before it traveled a foot. Still, the cry pressed against his throat, burning the flesh like acid. The words boiled against his tongue, demanding release, demanding the hope he could not promise.
Time. How much time had passed? Too much, he knew, but there was nothing here in the eternal darkness to mark the swift progression of the minutes. The minutes might as well have been hours. Time had no purpose in the darkness of the dreaming. The nightmare was eternal, it stretched before him without any hope of change. It was an illusion, and the illusion was timeless, but it stole the life from the sleeping soul. While his mind lay trapped within this waking nightmare, the slumbering lie stole her life from her.
It stole his, too. His blood seeped out, unseen, from some hidden wound.
A small hand grabbed his arm, spinning him around. The woman danced away, her form swathed within the weight of an enveloping cloak, her face hidden in its cowl. He lunged for her, his heart in his throat. He pushed the fabric back, but the eyes which looked back at him in surprise weren't hers. She laughed, and the high, bright sound twisted in his ears, mocking his attempts to live, mocking his decaying sanity.
He let go, trying to smile politely, but he could tell it didn't reach his eyes. She looked at him quickly, but flinched from his gaze, pulling her arm out of his reach. She stepped back, and was swallowed by the laughing, taunting masks. There was nothing beneath them. Like the space under her cowl, the faces behind the masks were empty. There was nothing for him in the waking world she inhabited.
There was only the nightmare.
Darkness swallowed light, twisting around him. He tried to hold onto something, anything, but there was nothing there. They ignored him, all of them. He was an obsticle in their paths. The wind carried them past
She was dying.
No. He couldn't think about it. He tried to pull his mind together, tried to hold onto what was happening, but there was nothing stable there. He tried to remember what he had never known, but knowledge was crushed by instinct. The threads unraveled faster and faster, but he had no time to hold it together. No time. Only the desperation that drove him now.
Akoocheemoya. I am far from the bones of my people. I am far from the home of my ancestors. I have lost the woman I love. Please, I beg for help.
He pushed through the crowd, trying to see through the sickly light. It filled him, choked him. He turned again, trying to find a sanctuary, an escape. Trying to find her, because she was his sanctuary, and if she was gone, he would never find peace again.
He was drowning in the light.
Kathryn.
The angles of her commbadge sliced into his skin, and he welcomed the pain. Life was pain, and as long as he could still feel the blood on his hand, he was still alive. The shard of metal served no other purpose here. It was silent, a messenger with no news to relate. It was useless, but it was the center of her world. He could not drop it.
Akoocheemoya. Please.
The spirits were silent.
His people, both living and dead, withdrew from him. He knew they were here, at some level of his mind, but he could not see them. He had sent out the search teams himself. They would not desert her, but he could not see them. He was alone in his search.
They searched for their captain.
He searched for his entire world.
A wisp of breeze touched him, and he stilled, his head coming around. There, on the far side of the huge room, a door stood open, just enough to catch the light. He should not have felt the air from here. Too far, too many people in the way, but it had stroked his cheek like a finger.
Drawn by the promise of something he couldn't name, he walked through the deseased light, walked towards the darkness beyond. His mind, ever concious of the dying time, pleaded for speed, but his feet would not obey. They moved in time with the rest, in time with the music that pulled him down and held his head beneath the water.
Too late he realized that he was part of the masked sea. His own mask still rested upon his face, though he could not remember why. The air he needed seemed trapped within it, and he tore it from his head. The sensation of liquid filling his lungs, imagined or real, subsided.
The masks, leering, laughing, pulled back, cleared a path.
His feet remembered the sensation of flying, and he began to run.
The faces passed slower then he ran, as if they, like their gazes, clung to him for a moment before letting go. The eyes caught on his costume like claws, but he pulled away.
Akoochimoya. Guide my footsteps.
Out. Free of the sound, the vision, the light. Free in the darkness.
Kathryn.
She wasn't here. And the time had run out. There would be nothing he could do to help her now. She was dead, but if she was, then so was he.
The stab of grief was so sharp that it brought him to his knees. Like the talons of a bird of prey, it sliced through his heart so cleanly, he almost didn't feel the wound.
The light of the double moons, red as blood, cut through the clouds and pooled around him as he knelt.
"Chakotay?"
His mind rebelled. The voice was hers, calling him. It tempted him towards the madness, a siren song that tore his mind to shreads.
Why not follow? What was there for him here?
"Chakotay?" This time, a hand, on the back of his neck, bringing his head up.
She was there, her eyes wide behind her mask, but they were her eyes. He reached up with a shaking hand and pulled it off.
She smiled at him. "Are you all right?"
There were no words. He fumbled at his side, trying to get a grip on the tricorder that he knew was there, but he could not bear to pull his eyes away from her. Finding it with slick fingers, he pulled it up and ran it over her, confirming what his mind already told him.
Her readings were fine. She was fine.
The tricorder dropped from nerveless fingers, and he rocked back on his heels. The silent terror of the nightmare desolved, and he found his voice. Words, so long repressed, for fear of what they could become, lashed out, filled with bile.
"Goddammit, Kathryn." A whisper only, but enough. The rage was there, in the words themselves, if not in his tone.
She pulled back, disbelief in her eyes.
Once they began, he could not stop them. "I couldn't find you. I thought you were dead. Thought you were somewhere here, dying."
Shock overtook her. "Why?"
"Harry Kim and two others. They ate something at dinner, something not originally on the menu. They were allergic. Went into anaphalactic shock. Harry stopped breathing."
Her face was pale in the dim light. "Is he...?"
He laughed, a short, bitter sound. "They're fine. But I couldn't find you. None of the rest of us had eaten it, but we didn't know, couldn't know about you." He closed his eyes, blocking out her striken face. "I thought you were dead, that I had failed you," he whispered, "That I would never see you again, except to place your body in your coffin."
Fingers, strong and gentle, touched his cheeks, pulling his head up. He kept his eyes closed, resenting this, resenting the way his newly whole heart, mind, soul strained towards her. "You can not imagine what I went through..."
"My commbadge-"
"I found it on the floor of the changing room. They couldn't even tell us what costume you were in. I screamed, I threatened, I pleaded, but no one knew." Finally, he opened his eyes, staring at her. He didn't care what she saw in their depths, didn't care about anything at all. "Dammit, Kathryn. I thought you were dead."
Her eyes were filled with tears. Her gaze dropped, avoiding his, as she opened his fist, peeling his fingers back from the commbadge in his palm. Keeping her hand in his, she picked it up. "Janeway to away team."
Tuvok's voice answered, the strain of the past hour not quite hidden under his smooth tone. "Captain. It is good to hear from you. Am I correct in assuming that this means you are unharmed?"
"I'm fine." Her free hand slipped from his and touched his cheek, then slid into his hair. He leaned into her touch, the stroke of her fingers against his hair. Her voice shook as she continued. "Commander Chakotay found me. Are Harry and the others all right?"
"All three are recovering. Are you ready to return to the ship?"
He pulled away from her, or tried, tried to put the distance she demanded between them. Before his could, her head dropped to his, forehead to forehead. "We will meet you in the entry way, Tuvok. As poorly as this night has gone, it would't be wise to leave without saying goodbye to our hosts."
"Understood, Captain."
The commbadge he had clung to for so long bounced to the ground, and she clapped one hand on each of his cheeks, holding his head still near hers. For a long moment, they crouched together in the empty garden, silent and each mourning the others pain.
Her voice, when it came again, was so weak he could barely hear it. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Her head tilted so her breath lay against the curve of his ear. "So sorry."
He could not reply, but where her cheek touched his, he could feel her tears. Or perhaps they were his.
Finally, she pulled away. The feeling of loneliness, the return to the way they had been stole his breath, and he steeled himself. But she took his hands, and when she stood, she brought him with her, her fingers interwoven with his. He looked up into her eyes, for once literally kneeling at her feet, instead of just in spirit.
She smiled at him through her tears. "Dance with me, Chakotay? Just one dance?"
He stared at her, disbelieving. Finally, slowly, ackwardly, he rose, and pulled her into his arms. She came willingly, laying her head on his shoulder and sinking into the solace he offered.
From far away, the notes dimmed by distance, the song played on, but there was no fear in it now, no compulsion to hurry. Instead, it wrapped them gently, singing them a lulliby, and soothing their wounds.
To the spirits, to his crew, to her, he gave a silent cry of joy. Thank you.
End