In the author's own words, this story is summarized as: Another "first-encounter" story. Rescued after weeks stranded on a desolate planet, Janeway tries to come to terms with what she and Seven were forced to do to survive.

In no way is "Sustenance" just another anything. It is a first-encounter, or first time story, that brings into startlingly brilliant relief the characters of Captain Kathryn Janeway and the former Borg who loves her, Seven of Nine.

At first a simple tale of survival and companionship on an Away mission, "Sustenance" turns into one of the--no, the best complex tale of love, support, and reconciling oneself to human need that can only be healed by the first two.

Tenderware casts each character exactly as the series does: Janeway, fiercely independent, tries to find strength in a mantle of command that could very easily, and does, very nearly, bring her to the brink of death. Her companion on this ill-fated Away mission is Seven of Nine, a natural follower who nevertheless figures out a way to lead. Through her earnest, honest nature, she not only seeks to provide her captain with a logical if unusual method of survival, but also guides Janeway to an understanding of herself and her heart.

Growing from first innocent glances to a love so strong it braves Janeway's anger itself, Seven is never more and never less than who she is: a woman with a deep commitment to expressing the truth, whether it's with Janeway, with her duty, or with her fellow officers. When Janeway wants to cover up exactly what happened on the planet, Seven walks that fine line, and in the end, truth wins.

Chakotay, for once, is also exactly who he's supposed to be too. Something the series misses the mark on occasionally--and not a few fanfics ignore or belittle Voyager's First Officer. Concern and latitude give way, in the lengthening silence and unfamiliar reserve from the captain, to an understandable pattern of thinking that leads him to conclude and then challenge Janeway and Seven, demanding the truth.

To tell you more would be to spoil the story. Suffice to say, there is a compelling need to finish this story from the moment you start reading with the first sentence until with relief you consume the final sentences.

I don't write many authors the moment I finish reading a story. Usually I take a day or two to digest it, so I don't babble. I couldn't with Tenderware's "Sustenance." The profound truths, of the lie of self-reliance, of the depths of Janeway's and Seven's hearts, and of the vividness of the prose just grabbed me. I lived through the traumas with them, and celebrated, in grateful relief, the triumphant realizations at the end. I had to thank Tenderware for the trip. I wrote her again in preparation for this review. In the first email, I gushed. In the second, I tried to find out, from one fanfic author to another, what mystical alignments produced such a stunning work.

Here are some of the questions I asked, and Tenderware's responses. I hope you are as fascinated by the answers she gave as I was.

TW: I think the provocative idea of a woman breast-feeding a starving adult has been in the back of my head ever since I read a similar scene -- (gulp!) over twenty years ago -- in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, although I don't think I realized that until after I wrote Sustenance.

All I really wanted to do for my second J/7 story was a hurt/comfort sort of tale. I initially just had them stranded with Janeway wounded and Seven trying to keep her alive. And then I thought "what if they had no food and were starving, too?" Once that occurred to me, I think the idea that Seven would try to breast-feed Kathryn popped into my head immediately. Since Seven has nanoprobes, there's virtually nothing we writers can't imagine her doing with them, including something as simple as inducing a natural female function. And I knew that it was absolutely within Seven's character to consider it nothing more than extremely practical to breast-feed Captain Janeway to keep her alive. The rest just fell into place after that.

TW: I envision everything, like scenes from the show itself. Maybe that's what makes J/7 fanfic so easy for me to write. I'm very much a product of television, which means that when I write fiction, I can't help but visualize the narrative as I write it. That's particularly useful for writing imagery (like the section in Sustenance when Janeway and Seven go swimming in the mineral springs). But I also think it helps make the dialog more believable. I work out the narrative as if it were a collection of scenes being acted out by Kate and Jeri. It helps me keep the characters "in character" when I can imagine them actually saying the lines I write.

I don't think I really "feel" the scene until after it's written. I mean, when I begin to write a scene, I have a general sense of what I need to accomplish in terms of the plot and what I want to accomplish in terms of the feelings I want to evoke. But the real depth of emotion seems to come out as the scene evolves because that's when Janeway and Seven sort of take over. That is, all I really do, in a sense, is create a situation for characters that I think I know pretty well, and then I just step back and let them deal with whatever situation I've put them in. The inspiration, at that point, comes totally from the way the characters are written and performed on STV. So I can only take about a third of the credit for what I write. The other almost two thirds goes to Kate and Jeri and the writers, and an extra smidgen to Brannon Braga for inventing Seven (but only a smidgen because I'm jealous he's dating Jeri <g>).

TW: I've witnessed it on several occasions throughout my life. Actually, I think the whole idea of "self-sufficiency" is a noble lie we tell ourselves. We think we're self-sufficient until we get sick or hurt or down on our luck, and then we learn, sometimes the hard way, just how dependent on others we really are. The truth is that people need each other. And yes, I have experienced that.

But I don't think that's where the realism of my story comes from. I think it comes from understanding Janeway's fierce kind of pride in the face of that presumed "loss." My father was a very proud Spaniard who contracted polio at the age of two and, as a consequence, walked with a limp the rest of his life. That limp certainly didn't diminish him in my eyes, but I do know that he tried to overcompensate for it. I think Janeway has a similar, wonderfully irrational, and almost tragic streak of pride. So I guess I have personal experience with the kind of person Janeway is, if that's what you mean.

You know, your question reminds me of the old saying that writers should write from their own experiences. I think there's a danger in taking that too literally. I mean, science-fiction writing would be seriously stunted if writers heeded that little bit of advice <g>. I think the trick is in understanding human emotions, personalities, and motivations. The rest just falls into place.

TW: For months now, I've had an idea -- one I worked out via email exchanges with my chum Otter -- for doing a "J/J/7" story, a kind of menage-a-trois between Seven and two Janeways (where her personality literally splits in two). As with my other stories, I like the challenge of telling an otherwise taboo tale -- in this case, the taboo of threesomes -- but developing it into a sensitive and palatable and hopefully believable story.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have the time to write anything that large and involved until this summer, after other personal commitments are out of the way. But I don't rule out the possibility that I might become inspired to write another couple of shorts, like "The Journey Home" or "Personal Time." I also like doing J/7 artwork as another creative outlet, and that requires a lot less time (usually just a couple of hours). So I may do more of that at least.