Author's Note:

Occurs in that universe of novels I've barely read, because God help me if some of that stuff ever becomes a concrete part of my headcanon. Amen.

They run the program without any of the holographic characters and, for the first thirty minutes, they play without making any conversation.

It's a shared silence he recognizes as something akin to a sacred experience, the likes of which she trusts he alone can understand. He savors the quiet that's interrupted only by the soft groan of wood floor beneath their feet,the crisp clicks of resin striking resin, and sometimes (if more often for her than him) the whispered thud of a ball falling neatly into a pocket. They take a break after he beats him at the second game, and then instead of their old tried-and-true banter there's just the clinking of a whiskey bottle and two beveled glasses against the bar.

It's a scene that could be a snapshot from almost any of their years of acquaintance, were it not for his receding hairline and other, small temporal markers, like the fact the whiskey is now real and she drinks more it than she used to while he, oddly enough, drinks less.

"Sins of the flesh," she'd remarks months earlier, not long after she'd come back from fourteen months of non-death. "How exquisite is sleep when tired? How heralded a glass of decent wine, at the end of a long day? I never realized how overrated self-denial is until I was with the Q... Which is singularly odd, as then I didn't physically want for anything."

He watches now as she sips steadily at her second round, her expression relaxed and her fingers drumming in a slow rhythm against the top of the bar.

"Penny for your thoughts," she says, sounding bemused as she arches a cryptic eyebrow over her glass.

"I was just deciding that I like this new you," he admits. "This whole resting when tired and eating when hungry thing. It's looks good on you."

He doesn't mention her relationship with Chakotay or the fact that she and the Captain have been living together. Neither of them have been trying to keep it a secret, but Chakotay is a deeply private person and Tom tries to tread lightly on whatever luck the universe has afforded the two of them after so much tragedy.

"And what of love?" she asks, somewhat surprising him as she smiles, "how does love look on me?"

"Very becoming," he replies, and then adds cheekily, "but most things look good on you."

"Flirt."

"Part of my charm," he chuckles. "But back to the subject. How does it feel?"

"Resting when I need to and not stopping at one whiskey?" she deflects with a crooked smile, though Tom senses something other than amusement beneath it.

"Love," he corrects. "How does love feel?"

"To be honest… it doesn't fit quite like I expected."

"Oh?"

She throws him a wry look, the kind that would have once signaled a complete change in topic, but she's freer with her feelings now, freer with herself, so Tom thinks to push back on her reluctance.

"Just the two of us," he reminds her. "And what's said in bars over Irish whiskey is protected by sacred covenant."

"Is that a law?"

"Well, if it isn't, it should be," he chuckles, and she leans back on her bar stool, laughing with him.

They both still and she swirls the contents of her glass as she states, "I've been in various degrees of love with Chakotay for years. And there were always reasons why a relationship wasn't feasible, wasn't responsible…"

"Reasons that don't matter now."

"Reasons that mostly seem ridiculous now," she readily concurs.

"So why do I sense a 'however' coming?"

"Tom," she sets her glass down, sounding abruptly serious. "Have you ever wanted something just because you couldn't have it?"

"Uh, there was a point in my life when I could have made a career out of it… But you know this already, Kathryn. So what's your point?"

"I don't know that I have one," she shrugs, sounding simultaneously confused and anguished.

"Are you trying to say you aren't sure if you love Chakotay?" he blurts, the implication she raised a moment earlier now finding home.

"I loved him for years," she repeats, now sounding vaguely defensive.

"Loved. Past tense. What about now?"

"It's fundamentally human," she begins to posit, though whether to herself or him, Tom can't really tell. "If you're famished, you eat. And at some point, when you're full, you no longer desire food. Same with thirst and drink, right?"

"Please tell me you're not comparing those things to being in love with someone," he manages and she shakes her head at his disbelief.

"We know thirst is transitive and we like to think that love is not because it feels stable. But what if that's just a convenient illusion we cling to? Humans are fickle, irrational creatures."

"Careful," he stops her, "you're starting to sound decidedly Q-like."

"So?" she challenges, and calmly stands up. "I'm not questioning that you love your wife, Tom. Or that B'Elanna loves you. But you have to admit that it's pretty naive, even narcissistic, to think both of you will still feel that way in five, ten years."

This floors him. He has no idea how to respond. And with his silence, Kathryn apparently loses interest in the subject, motioning him back to the pool table.

"Time for round three."

Her last statement, his blossoming fear that Chakotay's about to have his heart shattered, Kathryn's apparent lack of concern with the same - it all throws his whole game off. She trounces him in a way she hasn't in years, and when the game's over, she leans against the pool table, no trace of joy in her victory as quietly stares at him.

"It's still me, Tom," she promises, sounding a bit sad. "I'm still the same person. A little less concerned with some things, and a lot more honest. But I'm still me."

Tom wonders if she's trying to convince herself rather him, but they've come so far together and through so much, he has to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Doesn't he?

"When I was with the Q," she begins to tell him, "I could go anywhere and do anything, and the pain of most of the losses in my life just… slipped away."

"So why come back?" he asks. "Assuming you had a choice."

"Better company here," she smiles, and Tom can feel himself rolling his eyes even as he chuckles.

"That's a line I would have used," he teases. "You can't really think I'll fall for such thin flattery."

"Oh, I didn't mean you," she deadpans, and picks up her glass, gesturing to him with it. "I meant the whiskey."

It's the first thing she's said in minutes that hasn't filled Tom with doubt. So he picks up his own glass and clinks it against hers. "To sins of the flesh," he diplomatically offers.

"May they be plentiful," Kathryn finishes.

Tom forces a smile, remembering another ancient expression he's only read in old Earth literature.

And may God have mercy on our souls.

. . . . .