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I've always thought the first few seconds when the transporter beam locks on feel a little like sex or dying. Oh, not the final throes of those desperate states; not the stuttering joy of an orgasm, or the gasping terror of certain death. The tingle of the transporter is more like the moments that punctuate my relationship with Kathryn, defined by almost and maybe , when passion stirs the body, hope rises in the blood and temptation stirs the chest.
Perhaps I’m just a romantic and physical sensation is really more like the anxious thrill of a close shave with mortality.
Before I left Dorvan to join Starfleet, my father told me that each time a man is snatched by the beam he loses an indefinable part of his soul, but I never believed that. The transporter has saved my life too many times for me to see it as anything but a gift.
A gift I'm praying for right now.
Feels like Kathryn and I have been running forever. I can't remember a time not filled with gasping, leg muscles burning, the gnawing hunger that comes with missing meal after meal, and the kind of night-cold that seeps into the bones and stays until the sun bakes us the next day.
She tries not to show it, but I see her trembling beneath the tatters of her uniform. Her skin is mottled and blotchy and the backs of her hands torn by the grasping claws of dense thickets. She's propped against a tree, beyond caring that she's sitting on damp, bare earth. She stares at the sky.
I barely remember why we're running.
Separated from the landing party, stranded by a storm, hounded by a xenophobic race who object to our presence. Nothing's clear any more, except that we must run, run, run.
"Kathryn, we have to go."
She squeezes her eyes briefly shut. Nods. Drags herself to her feet.
We stumble on.
***
It’s night. We shelter, exhausted, filthy, famished, between a rock and the wide trunk of a gnarled tree. My lips are cracked. I wrap us close, to preserve what little warmth remains.
“Tell me about the warriors,” she whispers.
I’ve told this tale three times: once on New Earth and twice under this planet’s shining moons. She finds comfort in hearing, and I in telling, and like all good stories, this one grows.
“There was an angry warrior, who was captured by a beautiful woman warrior.”
I feel her judder as she huffs, “I don’t remember her being beautiful.”
“Oh, she was always beautiful. She still is. Hush.” I squeeze her shoulder and she falls silent. I go on, “Flung by fate to a distant shore, the warriors merged their two tribes into one strong clan.”
“That can’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t. It took a leap of faith from the beautiful woman warrior. Over the years the warriors faced many trials. Lost much. Gained more. Found each other.”
She straightens up a little. “They did?”
“Oh, they took the long road, but you see, working and living so close for so long, the professional and personal entwined. They each knew what the other was thinking. In the end they became like kin.”
“Family.”
“Yes. And more. One terrible night when they were hungry, lost and afraid in the dark, they realised that maybe they loved each other a little.”
“Huh. These warriors, they get back to their tribe to test that theory?”
“Oh yes. And more. After their rescue by their faithful clan, they resumed their quest for home. Eventually they made it back to their families and friends. And when they did, the warriors made a new tribe of their own, together.”
Kathryn coughs. “That’s not an ancient legend. That’s a fairy tale.”
“It’s not a fairy tale,” I say firmly. “It’s a prediction. Because even when it seems things can’t get much worse, warriors never give up hope.”
Kathryn sighs and after a while I wonder if she’s asleep. Then she offers a salutation into the shadows, “I think you’re right, Chakotay. They do love each other a little.”
***
We're beyond running. We're plodding, dragging each other, one foot in front of the other. Ahead, the forest thins to a scraggy mountainside. Towering peaks pepper the skyline.
"This is good," she says. "Height increases the chances of Voyager getting a lock on us."
It will also be colder and afford us less cover, but I don't mention that. I'm just glad to see the ghost of a smile curve her lips.
The sun warms my face as we pick our way up the mountain.
I don't know how it happens. One moment she's beside me, pointing to a bird high in the wild eddies of the greying sky, and the next she’s snatched by the crumbling earth. She doesn't scream, just makes a small sound of surprise, and then she is tumbling, bouncing, breaking, over scree and scrub and rock.
It's me who shrieks as I scramble, heart cracking, helter-skeltering, down, down, down the bramble choked bank towards her twisted body.
“Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn!”
She is a bloodied mess, barely conscious.
I stop the worst of the bleeding. Make her comfortable. Hours pass.
Her eyes flutter open. “Go on. I’m done.”
“Hey, no giving up. We’re warriors, remember.”
She clutches my hand. “That’s an order.”
“I’m ignoring it. Put me in the brig when we get back to Voyager. ”
In the hours that come my fear becomes rage, and then impotence. I hold her hand. I sit. I wait. The sky turns to ash on a horizon of blood. The cold creeps back. I’m not sure she’ll survive the night, and I don’t think I’ll survive losing her.
She groans.
I kiss her forehead.
Time slips by.
We are encased in darkness. The night howls, bites, rents and tears at my sanity, and I’m desperate to grasp something real, warm, alive, but I just find her cold hand. I try to whisper something meaningful, but my throat's tinder-dry and the proper words won’t form and the wind steals them anyway.
We’ve never said the things we needed to say.
Maybe in the end my father was right, my soul has been stolen, not by the beam that has deconstructed and reconstructed me a thousand times, but by the war between duty and desire.
Kathryn beckons me closer. I bring my ear down to her lips. “I love you,” she finally tells me, and falls silent.
My chest prickles with a billion tiny stings, my belly skittering, as something tears me apart, molecule by molecule.
I’ve always thought the transporter beam feels a little like sex or dying. I don’t know which. But here on this mountainside, with the woman I love in my arms, I’m about to find out.