Star Trek Voyager: Consequences

Star Trek Voyager: Consequences 9. Pandora's Box

The dull, heavy thud of his closing car door resounded in Chakotay’s ears as he finally allowed himself to begin to process what had just happened, even as he fumblingly tried to find his car keys desperate to leave as he continually imagined Kathryn running out after him and he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he ever saw her again… His hands clenched into fists on his knees as frustration boiled up within him, she had lied to him, blatantly, and he had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. How could I have been so gullible? How was I ever so blind as to let her affect me? I should of known, I’ve seen glimpses of it, the malicious jealousy, the possessiveness, all the warning signs were there and I’d seen them over the past seven years, I’d let her go, I was moving on…

At that thought he gulped and slammed his fist into the steering wheel. He’d had the chance of another and he’d let her go, even as the feelings, he could openly acknowledge it now, had lingered on… Kathryn had been right about that much. In this timeline too, her jealousy may have been morally wrong, but not misplaced. His lips twitched bitterly at the irony in the story, if only he’d known four years ago that the scorpion’s poisonous sting would come not from the former drone but from the very woman to whom he’d told that fable. She’d betrayed them both himself and Seven, laughed in the face of their loyalty, and now… As he reached the peak of his mental confusion and pain his shaking fingers wrapped triumphantly around the key and through he was dimly aware that he was in no fit condition to drive, he revved the engine anyway and set his mind, calm now, on the destination where he knew his future lay ahead of him.

The car slowed smoothly to a halt but he didn’t get out as his eyes focused on the dimly lit apartment block, the fear and tension was paralysing yet the place still was not as desolately sinister as the last time he’d stopped here with that traumatised ghost of a passenger. Again, despite the revelations of tonight, or maybe because of them, that drive back here from the hospital still disturbed him more than anything, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to think of that scene in her doorway without a shudder of foreboding. Had she known about them? Is that why she had called him, because she knew they were connected? He shook his head in dismissal of his own thoughts, if the Admiral had told Seven something on Voyager, and he couldn’t put such a cruelty past the woman who had caused all this grief for all three involved, she wouldn’t have opened that bottle again by contacting him. If you’d been brave and stayed with her, she wouldn’t have faced any of this alone… His conscience reminded him, bringing pangs of guilt bubbling to the surface to such a degree that he jumped abruptly out the car and ran to her doorway, just to eradicate these thoughts from his mind. He rammed his hand into the door so hard the shock reverberated up his whole arm. “Seven!” Silence. “Seven, I have to talk to you…” Still nothing and he peered anxiously through the small window. The apartment was in complete darkness, he couldn’t even make out the constant greenish glow of her regeneration unit. Vulcan… She was going to Vulcan, tonight! It’s too late. This realisation hit him like a hammer and he sank against the door. After a few minutes of standing like that, breathing hard, dark, defeatist thoughts began to run through his head again. What exactly was I going to say anyway? Hi Seven, I’ve just found out we were married in an alternate timeline and because I discovered tonight that the woman I gave you up for is a lying bitch I’d really like for us to go on a second date… God, even if she’d been there he still would have ended up with this door slammed in his face…

Seven sighed as the small commuter ship’s engines began to throb under her feet, she was on her way. She felt tears suddenly burn at the rims of her eyes once again; she’d expected more…relief with her departure. Maybe Tuvok had been right and she couldn’t just leave things behind… Distracting herself by once again running through the short inventory of her belongings, only the voice of the ship’s Captain brought her back to reality. “We’re now out of Earth’s atmosphere folks and will be going to warp imminently, look out of the viewports for a last glance at what Earth’s first astronauts called “the big blue marble”. There’s no sign of any spacial storms so we should arrive on Vulcan at approximately 0105 hours…” The announcement continued on but Seven’s eyes were unwillingly fixed on that beautiful blue swirl of cloud and sea, her mind transported from when she’d first seen it, during happy Mess Hall celebrations even she had thrown herself into with little effort…