A/N: the show would have you believe that none of them slept at all for like three days. sure, fine, whatever.

many thanks to sarken for helpful comments on the first draft. absolutely no thanks to sarken for getting me into this terrible, life-ruining 'ship in the first place.

"I'm not tired."

Despite the gravity of their situation, Chakotay had to turn his face away to hide his smile at the captain's insistence. Though he knew she wouldn't appreciate his amusement, there were times when she was delightfully predictable. The brief flash of normalcy was a much-needed reassurance.

"I believe you are in error, Captain," Tuvok said placidly. "You have been operating under physical and mental duress in excess of thirty-six hours and your adrenal response to this crisis cannot continue indefinitely. As we have no way of knowing how long our stay on this planet will be, it would be preferable for you to not work yourself into collapse at this time."

"Fine," she responded tersely after a charged moment of silence. "But the two of you need to rest as well."

Tuvok nodded. "The commander and I have discussed this. I will take first watch with Ensign Vorik. You and Commander Chakotay will relieve us in six hours. As we do not know the diurnal cycle of this planet, it may be necessary to modify this arrangement once the periods of day and night have been established."

Janeway looked up at the unfamiliar sky and sighed. "Let's hope we aren't here long enough to find out."

"Indeed, Captain."

.

The open rock formation they were using as camp wound narrowly along the cliff base for several hundred meters. Most of the crew had chosen to stay relatively near to the fire for the heat and reassurance it provided, gathering in small groups to talk softly in the flickering light. Many were already taking the opportunity to lie down and find what little comfort they could on the hard, alien ground.

Janeway followed without comment as Chakotay led the way to a deep recess he'd discovered in the rock wall. It was more distant from the fire, but large enough for them to be almost completely sheltered on three sides, affording the captain some small bit of privacy. He knew she'd never relax her guard in front of the rest of the crew or let herself appear anything other than resolute and assured. But even Tuvok had been concerned about the strain she was under. Chakotay was determined to give her the chance to let go some of that burden, if only for a few hours.

In the dim light they swept the dirt for insects and debris as best they could before sitting. To his left, the captain's profile was no more than a suggestion of features in silhouette, her posture rigid.

"Don't think I'm going to forget you ganging up on me with Tuvok," she told him.

"Ganging up on you?"

"The commander and I have discussed it," she mimicked.

"Yes, discussing crew safety and ensuring everyone rests. It's practically mutiny."

She turned her head to look at him. "Chakotay, I don't have the luxury of time to waste. I need to find a way to get my ship back."

"There's not much we can do right now, Captain, and the crew needs this down time. Everyone is exhausted. Even you," he added, "though you won't admit it." When she began to protest, he cut her off. "If you don't want to sleep then you can just lie there and come up with a brilliant plan to get us off this planet. But you will stay here and you will rest for six hours."

Silence. Then, "Are you giving me orders, Commander?"

"Yes," he said wearily. "It's my responsibility to look after you since apparently you won't do it yourself. And if you don't follow them then Tuvok and I really will gang up on you."

She sighed and he saw her head drop to rest on her raised knees. Taking her lack of response as assent, albeit grudging, Chakotay stretched himself out on the packed dirt and attempted to find the least uncomfortable position in which to sleep.

"I'd forgotten how cold it gets in the desert at night," Janeway said after a while, her voice muted. "I wish those clouds were a little lower."

He looked up at the faint glimmer of silver above. The cloud cover was complete but too high and thin to retain heat or produce rain. Too little, he thought. Too far away. Like so much of his life.

Without an immediate crisis, Chakotay had no way to hold back the maelstrom of his thoughts. Memories of Seska assaulted him, discordant and troubling. He saw her fighting Cardassians by his side, then sneering at him in Sickbay. She brought him mushroom soup in his quarters, then stood on the bridge of a Kazon ship holding his child.

His child.

Chakotay had always assumed he would have children. It wasn't a concrete or even articulated desire, simply a floating, nebulous sense of some day. Over the years none of his lovers had ever inspired in him a wish to bring that particular future into focus, but he'd felt no urgency. He'd thought he had plenty of time.

Then came the treaty and the Cardassians. So much death. Any thought of creating new lives was extinguished in the desperate fight to save the lives of those who were left.

When he'd joined the Maquis, Chakotay understood he was relinquishing his chance for children just as he'd relinquished his career in Starfleet. He'd been reconciled to the knowledge that the rest of his life would be brutal and short. More than reconciled: he'd embraced it. The anger and unrest he'd felt for so long finally found a purpose on which to hone themselves. Driven by grief and guilt, he'd become a man he barely recognised.

Then he was flung seventy lightyears from everything he knew and into the path of Kathryn Janeway. It was the beginning of a different kind of revolution. In those first moments of staring each other down on Voyager's bridge, he'd been caught by the force of her presence, the sheer conviction in her blue eyes. Something within him lowered its weapon and stilled for the first time.

In that new, calm space she rang like a clear bell.

Falling in love with Kathryn Janeway had been as quiet and profound as a gradual accumulation of snow. It gathered in him so gently he hardly noticed the difference of days, until one morning he'd woken to find his entire landscape beautifully and irrevocably altered.

It had taken him too long to see how much Seska's actions were motivated by jealousy and a desire to punish him. He acknowledged with shame that he'd been a fool twice over. While her betrayal had long since killed any lingering affection he'd held for her after ending their liaison, at some level he'd understood it. But this twisted mockery of the future he'd barely begun to shape had jeopardised everything—everyone—important in his life. Loathing vied with stomach-churning guilt as his fiercest emotion. The sense of responsibility settled heavily over him like a shroud.

"I'm sorry," Chakotay said into the silence. Words too small to cover the vast expanse of his regret. He sensed Janeway turn her head to look toward him again.

"For what?"

"It's my fault we're here."

"It's Seska's fault we're here," she corrected him.

"But I'm the reason Seska's here. She was part of my crew."

"And she became part of mine. Chakotay, I won't allow you to blame yourself for what she's done. She was a spy and a saboteur and very good at both. None of us had any idea. Not you or me or Tuvok or B'Elanna or anyone else. If you're at fault then we all are."

"But I'm the only one who fathered her child." He hated the bitterness in his voice, the wound too fresh to disguise.

A rasp of fabric announced Janeway's movements before she sat beside him. Her outline was a more solid darkness set against the fainter black of the night. "Chakotay, what happened to you — what was done to you — wasn't your fault. I told you that we would do this together, whatever you decided, and I stand by that. I stand by you." She placed her hand on his chest. "You know as well as I do that sometimes there are no good choices, only the least bad. Now I need — and our crew needs — you to let go of this ridiculous guilt you're carrying around. That's an order, Commander," she added.

He heard the teasing lilt under the command and couldn't help a small smile. "Aye, Captain."

Seeming satisfied that the matter was closed, she patted his chest, then stretched out to lie beside him, her gaze again on the sky. "We appear to be making a habit of this," she said.

It was his turn to look over at her, puzzled by the non sequitur. "Of what?"

"Getting stranded on unknown planets."

He huffed a soft laugh. "At least this time you have better company."

"More company, certainly," she said slowly, "but I doubt anyone could have been better company than you, Chakotay."

It was the most she'd ever spoken about their time together since Voyager had rescued them. As often as he'd longed for her to bring it up, now he found he didn't know what to say. Nothing he wanted to tell her belonged in this place. "How's your cheek?" he asked instead.

"Hmm?" Janeway turned her head and he could just make out the sheen of her open eyes. "Oh, it's fine. A little tender. I'll probably have a lovely bruise tomorrow."

"Think it'll teach you to behave like a 'proper' woman should?"

"Please," she said. "I've been hurt worse playing Parrisses Squares. It'll take a damn sight more than that to get me to submit to the Kazon's antiquated notions of gender roles. A lobotomy, maybe."

Chakotay laughed, as he was sure she'd meant him to. Not so long ago he'd made a promise to lighten her burdens, but here she was once again lightening his. The weeks since they'd returned to Voyager had been intensely bittersweet for him. There was joy at reuniting with his friends and crew, yet also a deep ache at losing what he and Kathryn had shared. They'd both found it difficult to reestablish a purely professional relationship, maintaining an exaggerated formality with one another until even Tuvok had commented on the strangeness of their behaviour. The tension had eased with time, the boundaries were rebuilt, but Chakotay struggled to rein in the hope he'd allowed himself during their exile.

They'd been on the verge of something there, he'd thought. Defining parameters as they went along, with each day holding the promise of a deeper closeness, a greater intimacy. Kathryn had been unfolding for him, allowing herself to be known, and every day he fell more in love with who he was learning her to be.

Then it was over.

With a sigh, Janeway rolled to her side and faced away from him. It was the only personal privacy they could offer each other here. In her black uniform she was swallowed by the dark, the glint of her hair the single part of her that seemed real. He watched her for some time, as the air around them grew colder and the heat of his body leached into the earth beneath him. Their uniforms only provided so much protection and if he was getting cold then the captain, with her smaller body mass, certainly would be.

Chakotay turned onto his side and studied her back. She was hunched in a slightly fetal position, the lines of her body tense. With so little light it was hard to tell but he thought he saw a tremor run through her. "Are you cold?" he asked softly, in case she'd already fallen asleep.

"I'm fine," she said.

Since she couldn't see him, he allowed himself to roll his eyes just this once. "You'll be warmer if you come over here so we can share body heat."

"I said I'm fine, Commander."

"You're shivering, Captain. I can see it." When he got no response, he tried a different tactic. "You did tell the crew to huddle up."

She sat up and turned towards him and he could imagine the look she aimed in his direction.

"I'm sure that's a very impressive glare you're giving me right now, but since I can't see it, it's not having much of an effect," he told her. "So why don't you just move over here so you can warm up and we can get some rest?"

He could almost hear her internal debate as she argued with herself, but in the end practicality won out, as he'd known it would. She moved carefully until she was lying in front of him with a few centimetres between them. Chakotay wriggled until they came into full contact and draped his arm over hers. After a few tense moments she began to relax from the unnaturally stiff pose she'd been holding and allowed herself to fit flush against him.

Janeway smelled of smoke and sweat and the last trace of something that might have been coffee or only his imagination. It wasn't the first time he'd held her this way, and he hoped, despite everything, that it wouldn't be the last. He wondered if she was thinking of it too: the ferocity of the plasma storm, how fragile it had made everything seem. Even them. Especially them. She'd cried out as much in anger as in fear, he'd thought, as though she blamed the planet for trying to prevent their escape. During the tumult Chakotay had been too concerned for their safety to be affected by her proximity. It was only as the storm calmed and an immense silence rose around them that he fully realised how close he held her and how she held on to him in turn.

They had lain there for a long time that night.

This time there was no storm to distract him and he struggled to control his awareness of her body against his, to be content with this stolen time, this sweetness. Matching his breathing to her rhythm of inhale and exhale, their lungs expanding and contracting in sync, he began to feel almost that they were one being. Her ribs rose and fell under his hand like gentle waves and, lulled by her warmth and her nearness, he slid slowly into sleep.

[END]

more notes: this was inspired by a post on tumblr wrt huddling for warmth. (i'd link you to it but oh yeah i can't! you'll have to go over to AO3 for that.) my brain, as usual, took it and ran like hell. 'infra' is Latin, meaning 'below'. much signified. very metaphor. wow.