bekjaneway

mia-cooper:

jhelenoftrek:

Like most things, this is @mia-cooper‘s fault. She made me read
the end of Eternal Tide again. This is payback.

*Spoilers
for the K. Beyer novel (Full Circle) within*

The first thing he does is drop to his knees.

Shattered glass lies all around in equal amounts of large and minuscule
shards.

Their previously coherent, shiny surfaces have been
irrecoverably destroyed upon impact with cobblestone – it mirrors what the man
in front of him has just done to the entire universe with two simple words.

“She is.”

They ring in his ears.

He begins sweeping the ground with his palms trying to clean up
the damage he has just done. It’s the only thing he can do at the moment
– try to make something right.

The glass scrapes and cuts him. He begins to bleed.
A strong hand catches his wrist and stops his efforts.

With assistance he is led to sit back in a cold chair.

He doesn’t accept when the waiter comes to offer a glass of
water. He doesn’t protest when the maître
d’ appears with a brush and pan to sweep away the rest. He doesn’t flinch
when the stones he had so carefully collected are discarded in the trash. They don’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

He doesn’t feel pain or sorrow. He isn’t angry or even
confused. He is blank.

Shock, he thinks in a
flash of coherency. I’m in shock. He is
instantly hot and shaking.

Then he realizes he hasn’t been breathing.

One breath, he
thinks. I need to take one breath.

It is an eternity before his lungs fill again and when they do
it is purely from muscle memory. The air burns. Existence now comes in gasps
and chokes and then he blacks out.

He wakes in a familiar place. But how he got home, he
can’t remember. All he can recall are
the last words he heard. “She is.” Before the darkness has a chance to overtake him again he hears sounds coming from the hall.

“One moment,” a voice says.

He recognizes the timbre.
Mark, he thinks. That’s
how I got home.

There is a muffled conversation taking place now between the man
and someone else with a husky but feminine voice. It is hard for him to make out as he swings
his legs over the edge of his unkempt bed. But for an instant it sounds just like….

It can’t be.

He runs, tripping over his feet to reach the door and swings it
open with the urgency of a man on fire.

He sees her from behind and his heart soars. The fog, the pain, wrenching grief lifts for
an instant until….

“Chakotay,” she says, turning slowly. “I’m so sorry,” then she’s coming to
him. “I know you were close to my
sister.”

He falls through the floor and rolls once again into the pit
that is now his life.

“Phoebe,” he chokes. “I….”

She rushes to him, arms are thrown around his muscular
shoulders. And for an instant the sister
feels like she did. Smells like she did. It’s almost too
much to bear.

“One day,” she sobs
into his shoulder. “One day we’ll make
them pay for what they did to us.”

He says “yes” to support her, not because it matters. Not because anything matters anymore. He doesn’t even know who ‘they’ are yet.

When she finally releases him and they have come back to a point
of calmness the three gather around his dining room table.

“We have some plans that we need to see to,” Mark says solemnly. Then the man speaks of services and monuments and details that won’t stick in Chakotay’s mind.
All he can really do is nod and hope that someone else will take care of
whatever needs to be done.

When the two have left and he is alone again in the deafening
silence, he sits on a chair and stares mindlessly out the window. The bright, warm sunshine is unbefitting of
the cold, dark emptiness in his soul.

I should be in space, he
thinks. In darkness. This isn’t right.

He closes his eyes to place himself away from the harsh light of
reality.

How. How will I ever…?

Then, as if whispered into his ear, words seep through. They are clear and
exacting – drawn from moments of the previous hours. He opens his eyes.

One breath, he
thinks. And then he inhales, the fresh
air purifies his mind.

One moment, he knows. And he looks upon the sky because that’s where
she will always belong to him.

One day, he
believes. I will see her again. And he is right.

He just has to take this one
day at a time.

From the prompt: One breath, one moment, one day at a time. -K. Beyer, “The Eternal Tide”

Heart. Officially. Smashed.

I can’t even.