AN: Thank you. With a vastness I can't even express—especially to Wee-me and Le'letha who wrote big fat reviews and kept me on track (and frantically looking details up in the big Star Trek encyclopedia)—thank you. To all reviewers—you simply have made this story happen. There would have been no story without you. Period. ::throws huge handfuls of pink confetti:: This is the last story—the end of the first story—in this epic tale. So, one last time… onward.
Kathryn stood on the bridge until she heard the welcome sound of B'Elanna's voice over the comm. "Permission to come aboard, Voyager One." She sounded confident and relieved, and the tension eased out of the captain's small frame.
"Permission granted, Lieutenant. We'll expect you on the bridge. Voyager One out." She grinned, and Harry grinned back. Tuvok's eyebrow was arched lightly, but he was in the middle of a scan and refrained from comment. Kathryn took a moment to dance lightly over the puzzle in her thoughts. With half of her mind she wanted to hear the rest of the story of Voyager Two, as they had nicknamed the other ship for ease of reference. The other half was fixed on what had transpired, and what had not, between herself and two versions of the same man. And wondering what to do about it.
Within moments, B'Elanna, flushed with excitement and tugging a mildly bewildered Ensign Vorik behind her, strode onto the bridge. Kathryn convened a staff meeting right there on the spot and they listened, rapt, as she told the tale of the other Voyager and the triumphant recapture of the ship. Of Harry, B'Elanna could not have been prouder, but she told Vorik's part with a special drama that made his eartips flush. Kathryn and Tuvok's eyes met at the significance of her ability to communicate actual thoughts through physical contact with the young Vulcan, thought they doubted anyone else but Vorik knew exactly what that meant—even B'Elanna. Still, as B'Elanna flashed Vorik a shy smile, he gazed at her with a depth that she could not have mistaken the meaning of. She did not look away.
"Was I not there at all?" Tom Paris's voice cut through the momentary silence. He had missed the entire cryptic exchange. B'Elanna blinked and tore her eyes away from Vorik, and then had to clear her throat.
"Your counterpart… was the pilot, Tom. In the Badlands." She favored him with a soft frown. "You switched places with Stadi."
His clear blue eyes widened. "You mean I died?"
She nodded, and Kathryn patted him on the shoulder. "You can't be a hero in every universe, Mr. Paris."
He swallowed slowly. "There are worse things than to die for a beautiful woman." Harry chuckled at him, and Tom scowled playfully.
Chakotay was pensive, and Kathryn turned to the silent space that was her first officer. He met her eyes, and nodded. She recognized that his satisfaction at the successful recapture of the ship was balanced with his own personal grief at knowing that somewhere out there, the Maquis had taken over Voyager and killed her captain, and he had, at least in one universe, made that choice. She took a step to him and tilted her head. "I am glad to have my Chakotay back."
He nodded softly, a shadow of his half-devil grin flitting over his lips. Like everyone else on this ship, he belonged to her. There was truth of it even in his inability to speak, and she knew to her heart that he would carry her home. Instead of addressing the point at hand, he flicked his eyes at the chronometer. "Mind if I take this watch?"
A nervous butterfly flickered its lonely way through her stomach. She ignored it. "Consider yourself hired." She nodded crisply to him, and was just about to order them away from the rift when Harry, moving back to the Ops station, caught her attention.
"Captain, the rift is closing." He began running scans, anticipating her next question.
"Natural means or artificial?" She turned to look at the viewscreen as run through Harry's filters and watched the rift slowly vanish. Behind her, she heard Harry snort gently with laughter.
"Artificial, but I don't know how he did it. I just received a final subspace communication." He put the transmission over the comm. It was a series of percussion beats, with timpani and snare and what sounded to Kathryn like xylophone. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he shook his head with a bemused smile. "Its something I've been working on. But I'm not so sure I like the timpani just like that. If you took the high snare and rode it over the top…" He paused, and blushed at her amused expression. "Sorry, Captain. That's all it was."
She nodded, and turned back to the viewscreen for a moment. For a long moment, the entire bridge was silent. And then it was time to go. "Set a course for home, Mr. Paris. Chakotay, you have the bridge. I'll be in my quarters if you need me." She walked up the bridge ramp and paused by Tactical, where she set her hand on the board. Tuvok briefly covered her hand with his. The flush of heat stayed with her all the way down to her quarters.
Kathryn slipped into the steaming bath with a huge sigh, the days events saturating her mind. The idea of a mutiny troubled her more than she would care to admit. And while she was being honest with herself, the idea of letting her guard down and allowing Tuvok to become the lover he already was in every sense but the physical was troubling, too. Partly because of the question of why it hadn't happened already, and partly whether she was going to take that one small step. It seemed inconsequential now, after this day's events. But it wasn't.
A small sound startled her, and she opened her eyes to see the man in question standing in her bathroom doorway, his hand balanced gently on the frame, and his dark eyes calm on her. She smiled. "I thought you might be coming, so I set the door to open on your voice."
"I did not expect to find you at your bath." Nor did he seem inclined to move away from the door. She rested her chin on her hands and studied him candidly.
"I come here a great deal when I need to think through things."
He stepped forward into the bathroom. "Does resting in water assist your thought processes?"
She appeared to consider the question while her eyes took in the easy way his weight rested slightly more on one hip than the other. In the many years she had spent learning to read the minutiae that indicated his moods, she had learned to recognize when he was being playful, even when the lilt in his tone and the lift in his brow didn't give it away. Which was actually much more often than she would ever admit to him. What she said to him was, "Doesn't it do the same for you?"
His dark eyes flicked to the side. "Water baths are an unimaginable luxury on Vulcan."
The moment vibrated between them silkily. And then Kathryn moved aside and made room for him. He undressed consciously, carefully folding his uniform as if it needed to be tucked into a drawer before setting it to the side. Physically, he was lithe, cat-like perfection. But she ended up being rather more distracted by the expression in his eyes.
Tuvok had been many things to her: accuser, officer, tactician, council, confident, and finally friend. She couldn't pinpoint the first moment that she had loved him, but it had been fairly early that he had become indispensable to her. Kathryn was fiercely independent, so if she needed him, then love would not have been far behind. But she had never fully comprehended that he might love her until now. As he stepped into the bath and the water slid up over the dark, graceful contours of his body, he watched her with such an intent tenderness that her eyes stung with tears.
Her mind was wiped clean of all the possible speeches she had prepared. He tilted his head slightly and reached out to stroke his fingertip and thumb along the bare line of her collarbone. The heat from his touch was so raw that she nearly missed that his hand trembled, very slightly.
But she didn't miss it. For all his outward calm, Tuvok was nervous, and that gave her the last piece—what she had been missing all along without even realizing it.
Courage.
She who had face Kazon and Vidiian, who had taken back her own ship with a phaser rifle and a really bad mood, and who had faced down this man and a room full of admirals, needed courage to face him naked and in a bath. She would have acknowledged the irony had there not been more pressing things on her mind.
Kathryn took his hand and kissed it. "I've been afraid."
"As have I." His voice was as gentle as his gaze. She rose slightly and reached for him, and then he was pulling her against him, waves riding up and down against their torsos pressed together, water splashing outward and his skin glistening, wet against her hands. He kissed her, deep and fever hot, their minds joining intimately together, thoughts winding like ivy as their fingers threaded together.
At some point Tuvok picked her up and carried her to the bed, both of them soaking wet. He tried to balance his weight to the side, fearing to crush her, but Kathryn neatly tipped him off balance, sighing with pleasure as he settled into her. Her fragile body felt like that of a bird's underneath him, but he knew she was anything but fragile. Her mind, her heart… all of her was a constant astonishment to him. And then she slid her thigh across his hip and deftly opened herself to him, physically and spiritually, and she became… everything.
Much later, as he lay on the bed and watched her sleep, Tuvok allowed himself a moment to ponder the implications of taking as a lover the captain of his ship, and his best friend. To the first, he was technically entitled, as his bond had been broken. Without a mate he would not survive. He had been grieved, and he would still face T'Pel his wife and accept judgment, if they returned. When they returned. As to being mate to the captain of a ship, it was not the best choice, he admitted candidly. She was in constant danger, often through her own stubbornness. He would be a fool to think he could exert more influence over her as her lover than as her friend. But he did not regret loving her. As to the third, he wondered how their new relationship would affect the one already in place, which he held dear.
She stirred against him. "I can hear you thinking, Tuvok." He smiled gently.
"I apologize for waking you, Kathryn." He kissed her cheek, and she nuzzled against his chest. Something stirred in his belly, and he marveled at her ability to evoke desire in him. He realized that he wasn't sorry at all for waking her.
"You're worried that this is going to change things?" Her mouth pressed warmly against his shoulder, while her hand slipped slowly across his abdomen.
"Vulcans do not worry," he admonished her teasingly. "But yes."
She nodded, and pulled back to look at him. "Is that a good enough reason to stop walking the path we're on, Tuvok?" Her clear grey eyes were steady on him, and at that moment, she was at once captain, friend, and lover. He lifted a hand to stroke away a wisp of auburn hair from her cheek.
"No. It is not." His hand continued to trail down her shoulder and back, and she closed her eyes and smiled.
"Good answer, old friend."
::fin::