Venice – 2378

"Kathryn?"

He finds me at the window again, but I'm not sure how long I've been there, or even how long I was gone. If I ever was. He reaches for my face and brushes my lips with his thumb when his fingers move into the hair at the base of my neck. The sensation it evokes is a boneless, radiating bliss. Our proximity has always had this effect, to one degree or another, like two stars held in elliptical orbit. Our trajectory depends on a focal point, a connection.

My mouth touches his with tentative freedom. This is still so new it takes a moment to adjust to the idea that we are not compromising a damn thing, except, maybe, the pliability of flesh against the stone underfoot. I somehow doubt we'll make it back to the bed.

Chakotay withdraws just enough to see my face, his voice breathless and warm. "Not that I mind, but what was that for?"

A stricter expression tightens the corners of my mouth as an eyebrow arches up my forehead. "Do I need a reason?"

"Certainly not, Admiral." He punctuates it with a soft, chuckling kiss against the pulse point of my wrist, and then entwines his fingers with mine.

Still, I tell him. He listens quietly; the Conscription, the Fen Domar. Seven. The images are difficult to reconstruct past fleeting bursts of attached emotion, what I felt in them and how I feel about them now, but I manage to encapsulate them into something we can both understand, and there is only one question left.

"Do you think it's possible," I ask, studying our conjoined hands, "the other Admiral came back to change this, as well?"

Chakotay brushes his lips against my knuckles, his eyes fixed to a distant point as he considers it. "It's a possibility we certainly can't discount. But if I'm being honest, it's a fate I'm glad you - she - spared me."

I hold his eyes, hunting for the explanation I desperately need. For a minute, he looks as if he intends to leave it at that. "The truth is, I can't imagine as world where I am not by your side in some capacity. But I suppose, the multi-verse being what it is, even that timeline exists somewhere. If you hadn't taken command of Voyager, if Tuvok hadn't been able to infiltrate my ship. I could have died with the others on Tevlik."

I shudder at the thought.

"So," he continues, "as far as changing fates are concerned, I'd say we got a pretty good deal."

Finally, I let my hands drift to the soft recesses at the base of his spine, urging as much as insisting, as our kiss resumes to the reeling melody of a distant violin.

What happens between us there - in the open archway of the window, against the wall, and eventually on the floor - is wanton, rushed, but familiar enough for neither of us to care. We need this. We've earned this. And there will be plenty of time to explore and catalog the intricate responses to heat and touch... in the future.