Chapter Eleven

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed!

"Can I come in?"

Her heart was beating such a fast, uneven rhythm that Kathryn thought the creature she carried against her chest must surely be able to feel it thundering through her ribcage. She held the jotling a little tighter, its small body a warm weight, a welcome buoy in the rising tide of nerves threatening to drown her.

Chakotay was looking down at her with a frank intensity that did nothing to help her equilibrium. He blinked at her words and then stepped back.

"Please," he said, raising one hand to welcome her into his suite.

Janeway walked past him into rooms that closely resembled her own, though in truth she'd barely had time to register the form of the ones next door before leaving them again. She'd entered her suite preoccupied with intense frustration at herself. She was here to talk to Chakotay, wasn't she, or at least that was one of the reasons she had come all this way. Yet she couldn't bring herself to open that discussion, not even when he was standing mere inches away, waiting, clearly leaving her yet another opening to begin that dialogue. She, Captain Janeway of the lost ship Voyager, she who had defeated the Borg, she who had quelled the Hirogen, she who had beaten death on more occasions than was reasonable to count, could not face a simple, direct conversation with another human being.

You've done it before, for god's sake, she'd told herself, as she'd leant back against her closed door with her eyes shut, listening to him pace away to his own rooms. With him, no less. It's not even as if this is uncharted territory.

Except that it was. Oh, it was. And how could she say all the things she needed to when he looked at her like that, with eyes more vocal than the most accomplished of symphonies? When they were back there, where every almost-touch came with a spark she hadn't ever sought or expected, but that they both seemed somehow incapable of quenching? When just standing in front of him in any situation other than pure duty felt like teetering on the edge of a cliff that she wanted him to drag her over?

She was too controlled, too ruled by her head. He was too expressive, too ruled by his heart. And so between them they had quickly reached same impasse they'd first ground to a halt at years ago.

Let the dust settle, she'd told herself, still leaning against the door. It really has been a long day. Perhaps tomorrow will bring-

Her excuses had been interrupted by a snuffling sound, followed by a noise like a tiny, mournful howl. Startled, Kathryn had pushed away from the door, moving cautiously into the room. When the sound came again she located its source as coming from the bed. On it had been laid a thick blanket, and sitting on the blanket was a very small creature. It saw her coming and howled again, though howl was really too generous a term for the miniature and somewhat comical noise the dog-like animal was emitting.

"Oh!" Kathryn had crossed to it quickly, whereupon it had begun wiggling its ears, a gesture she recognised as resembling the wagging of a tail. "What are you doing here?"

The puppy – because at present she didn't know what else to call it – stood up on wobbly legs, hankering for attention. Kathryn had scooped it up, wondering whether this was just a normal part of welcoming a guest in the Ellennial tradition. But Chakotay would have mentioned it if it had been, wouldn't he?

The animal snuggled against her, replacing the loss of its mother and siblings with the warmth of her body. It had brought a smile to her face, the sensation of a living thing in her arms. What a coincidence, she'd thought, that just yesterday, on Voyager, I was thinking that what my quarters needed was a dog, and here I am today-

But of course it wasn't a coincidence. Of course it wasn't. And she had known then, in a flash, why this creature was here, who it was that had known her well enough – cared about her enough – to understand that part of what had been missing from her heart for six years was the easy, undemanding companionship of a dog.

She'd been out of her door before she'd even had time to think of what she was doing, or what she was going to say. How could he be this person? How could a man that had seen so much, lost so much, still find the space in his mind to store this tiny piece of knowledge about her?

Why are you so good to me?

Now she stood at the centre of his rooms, clutching an alien pet, completely adrift.

"I'm sorry, Captain, if the jotling was an unwelcome surprise," Chakotay said, softly.

She turned to look at him. He seemed to be staying a good distance.

"A jotling?" she said, aware just how rough her voice had remained. "That's what the Ellenial call them, is it?"

He gave a brief nod, his gaze still intense. She could see the tension in the muscles of his arms, bare beneath the short sleeves of his regulation T-shirt. Looking at him was too much and so she looked down at the jotling instead, stroking its head. It snaked out a small pink tongue to lick her hand and Kathryn felt her heart constrict and expand, a painful simultaneous pulse as if it might finally be stretched beyond the bounds of what a person should be expected to bear.

"No," she said. "It was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. It…" she took a breath, and looked up again. "Chakotay, we need to talk."

It seemed to take him a moment to move. "All right," he said, moving towards the large couch that delineated the living area. "Why don't we sit? Can I get you a drink?"

"Some water would be welcome. Thank you." She went to sit down. Part of her wanted to keep the jotling on her lap for this exchange, a protective barrier to hide behind. Instead she set it down on the floor. It wandered off to explore and she watched it cautiously sniffing around the perimeter of the room until Chakotay came back with the water she had asked for.

He sat down at the other end of the couch, turned towards her. She took a mouthful of water and then put down the glass, trying to work out how to begin. Silence reigned between them, broken only by the snuffling of the jotling's explorations.

"Chakotay-" she began, at last, and then stopped, failing. She looked up at him. "I don't know how to do this."

Chakotay watched her, eyes dark and solemn. "Just say whatever it is you want to say, Kathryn."

She made a sound in her throat, shook her head. "You make it sound easy."

"It is that easy. And…" he smiled wryly, though without bitterness. "You've done it before."

"No," she said. "No. I haven't. I-" she swallowed the beating of her heart. "I've never done this, I've never said this. Not out loud, not to you. Not even in my head, to myself. And I don't know how. I don't know-" she broke off and risked a glance in his direction. The expression on his face had changed, a look of shock mixed with something else, something that ghosted like a charge between them, so visceral that she had to get away from it.

Kathryn stood up, pacing away from him with her back turned. When she turned back again Chakotay was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together, every ounce of attention fixed solely on her. She shook her head, drowning, struggling to surface in a riptide she'd been fighting to survive for years.

"I didn't expect you," she said, staring at her hands instead of at his face. "Out of everything about this mission that came as a shock, you were the biggest blindside of all."

She let the silence hang for a moment or two, trying to formulate words that would lend shape to this, this nebulous, unspoken, desperately spurned concept that had loomed around her for so long.

"They warn you about it in captaincy training," she went on, eventually. "About… attraction between officers. The Fleet recognises that it is an inevitable occurrence, especially on long missions. They teach new captains how to look out for it, how to deal with it when it arises. They offer advice on avoiding situations, how to… how to limit contact. How to move past it, how to concentrate on what's waiting for you at home." Kathryn swallowed. "But Voyager wasn't supposed to be on a long mission. More than anything I wanted to be a good captain for my crew. I wanted to complete my assignment successfully. I was engaged. I was happy. And I never… I never expected you."

Kathryn could feel him looking at her, a sensation as tangible as heat. She didn't think Chakotay had moved a muscle since she'd begun her halting explanation. Part of her wanted to bolt for the door, to put the distance between them that her Starfleet training had told her was the right course of action. But they'd tried that already, hadn't they?

"I did everything I was trained to do," she said, trying to keep her voice level, trying not to let it betray how she felt inside, quivering like the last leaf of fall in the Indiana of her childhood. "I tried to behave as if Voyager was on a standard mission. What else could I do? There was no other rulebook for me to follow. But…"

"But?"

After his prolonged silence, the sound of his voice was a shock. She looked up to find that Chakotay was on his feet.

"It didn't kill the attraction," she said. "It killed something else, instead. Something… bigger, more important. Or at least, I thought it had. And then everything else took over anyway and I thought it was dead and buried. Until-"

"Until we were apart," he supplied.

Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. Kathryn looked down at her hands again with a brief nod. "Tuvok thinks-"

"Tuvok?"

Kathryn looked up with a slight laugh. "He's the reason I'm here."

"Tuvok?" Chakotay repeated, with no less incredulity. He'd taken a step closer.

She shrugged one shoulder. "One reason, anyway."

"What does Tuvok think?" Chakotay asked, softly.

He took another step towards her. Kathryn's heart reacted, boiling in terror and, god help me, she thought, anticipation. It was hard to breathe.

She shook her head, once, trying to clear it. Get your chin up. Face it. Face him. "He told me a story."

Chakotay quirked one eyebrow, a trace of amusement in his eyes. "Did he? I approve."

"A real one," she added.

"He's a bolder man than me, then. What was it?"

"A story about how devastation isn't always the end. Sometimes it can be a new beginning."

Chakotay nodded. "And that's what made you come to Ellenia?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Kathryn shook her head. Talking about what Tuvok had pointed out to her was just obfuscation, a delaying tactic. If she didn't do this now she never would. She was shaking now. He must be able to see it.

"Chakotay. I didn't come to Ellenia. I came to you."

He stayed where he was, eight paces away, no more, watching her. The adrenaline surged through her then bleached away, leaving her blank inside, still shaking.

"You," he said, softly, "are the bravest woman I have or will ever meet."

She shuddered a laugh, letting go of a long, awful breath. "Not in this," she said. "This is-"

Chakotay started moving again then. He walked towards her, slowly, and with each step he took she felt the panic building in her chest, the urge to flee. She forced herself to stand her ground, to wait for him to reach her. When he did, Chakotay took her left hand. It had curled the way it always did in crisis. He laid her fingers flat against his palm, stroking his thumb over her knuckles. They stood like that for a while, looking down at their joined hands. Then he reached out his other to tip her face up towards his.

Looking him in the eye was painful, because what she saw there she had been hiding from for six years. Confronting it was like laying bare her soul, not just to him, but to herself. This was against everything her training had taught her, against everything she had been trying to do in all the time they had known each other. But they had been here before and she'd tried the other path. All it had done was walk them into a storm front that she couldn't gamble on surviving a second time around.

Chakotay stroked her cheek, studying her face. Whatever was between them was already far beyond mere idle attraction. They both knew it. They had done their best to tear it down in too many ways to count, both deliberately and by accident, and it was still there. It wasn't going to go away.

Why, she asked herself, would I ever want it to?

Still, when he leaned in she tensed, the hand held in his coiling involuntarily. He stopped, eyes fixed on hers, but didn't move away. Patient. Waiting. She let out a tiny breath, trying to shake off the invisible shackles. She let her fingers open, let them tangle against his. Chakotay leaned in again and kissed her, gently. Once. Twice. Three times, caution slowly fading. Kathryn slipped her free arm around his hips as he gathered her in, still holding her hand, bringing it up to clasp it against his chest. His body was warm against hers, solid: familiar and at the same time entirely unknown.

They stayed like that for a long time, lost in each other. But found, too.

Later, they stood on the balcony, looking down at the waves crashing against the cliff below. There had been no tearing off of clothes, no wild romp on his Ellenial bed. Neither had needed to rein the other in, to suggest it might be a good idea to take this slowly. They knew each other too well.

Kathryn leaned back against Chakotay's chest, her head beneath his chin. He moved one arm from around her to stroke her hair away from his face.

"I don't know how to do this," she said. "I don't know how to be your Captain and your lover."

She felt his arms tighten on her at that last word. He pressed his lips into her hair. "I know. We'll figure it out."

Kathryn pulled away enough to turn in his arms. The wind played with her hair. She could taste the salt of the ocean on her lips. She felt at peace here, in a way she hadn't for years. Yet it could never be home.

"I don't know how this will feel. Once we're back on Voyager."

He smiled. "I know that, too."

"What if I can't-"

Chakotay silenced her with a kiss. It was long, slow and full of promise. When he pulled away, he was still smiling. "You'll find a way. We'll find a way." He rubbed one thumb along her jaw, shaking his head slightly. "I never expected you, either."

A whine came from somewhere behind him. Kathryn took a look around his left bicep. The jotling was sitting on the balcony step, looking up at them, its small head tipped to one side. She extricated herself from the warmth of Chakotay's arms and picked it up, cuddling it beneath her chin. The animal rubbed its head against her neck.

"What do you think?" she asked, turning back to Chakotay. "Will our hosts let me keep it?"

Chakotay crossed his arms. She let herself take notice of the way his muscles bunched as he did so. "I'm not sure I like that idea," he said, his tone lightly playful.

"Oh?"

He moved towards her again, catching her face between his palms. "If you've got a pet for a companion, you might find you don't want me anymore after all."

"I've wanted you for six years," Kathryn said, before she could tell herself not to. "I don't think there will ever be a time when I don't want you."

She just had time to enjoy the expression on his face. And then there was no distance left between them at all.

[END]