Star Trek Voyager: Time On My Hands

Unpacking

Time on My Hands 2

 “Unpacking”

 “I've never had so much time on my hands.”

 The wolf looks at me with amber eyes, then looks away. She says nothing.

 She's lying next to me, legs outstretched, pink tongue lolling, head pressed against my thigh. I run my hand through the gray-white fur along her belly. She's thinner than I remember, her ribs raised under my palm.

 It's the first time she has appeared to me in almost three years.

 I cannot remember the exact moment when she stopped coming to me in my vision quests. During the incident with Captain Ransom and the Equinox, I was desperate for her counsel. She did not come to me, and I realized she hadn't for months. My vision quests without her had been useful only to a point, providing respite from a life on Voyager that had become mundane in its routine, but punctuated by periods of chaos and terror.

 There was no good advice to be found on those vision quests. And I could have used some good advice.

 Intellectually, I know that the vision quest is a closed loop. The akoonah replicates the dream state and allows access to parts of the brain that are usually not available to the wakeful mind. My people refer to our animal guides as entities unto themselves, but we know they are not. They are our own deepest selves made manifest to us. Sometimes they surprise us because the way we really are is often different from the way we perceive ourselves. The wolf has always given me good advice because she represents my true self, my best self.

 It should have troubled me that the wolf stopped coming to me.

 It didn't.

 I simply...shrugged it off.

That had become my primary method for dealing with the Delta Quadrant. Anger? Shrug it off. Disappointment? Shrug it off. Embarrassment? Shrug it off.

I had learned to ignore my own feelings out of self-preservation.

The Delta Quadrant broke me. The man I was before Voyager – even the man I was at the beginning of our journey – was buried so deep inside me that I couldn't find him anymore. So the wolf stopped coming to me, and I stopped trying to reach her.

When I packed to leave Voyager, I buried my akoonah in a cargo container with my medicine bundle. I told myself it was out of respect for Seven, who did not approve of my spirituality.

In truth, it was because I was afraid the wolf would appear to me again.

But you can't hide from yourself forever.

Leaving Voyager with Seven was...not my best decision. I knew it even then. Standing with Kathryn, watching Seven hover over our bags and cargo containers, I realized I was making a terrible mistake. I even knew why I was making it. Something in me, maybe my best self making one last effort to set things right, caused me to linger at Kathryn's side.

“The years have taken a toll,” I said. “On all of us. On you and me.” I looked down at Kathryn, hoping she would understand. “Maybe someday we'll remember who we were before.”

“Maybe,” she said. “In time.” Her back was straight.

I nodded. “Time,” I said. “We have plenty of that now.”

“I suppose we do.”

I suddenly understood that I would no longer see her every day. The knowledge cut me in a place so deep I almost couldn't breathe. “I don't know how to say goodbye to you,” I said.