Title: Fill in the blanks
Fandom: Star Trek Voyager
Genre: Romance/Friendship
Pairing: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Rating: T
Summary:

If you ask me, there are gaps between the episodes of the show where its makers might have just as well put a sign saying "please insert love story here". So I decided to accept the challenge and fill in the blanks...

There are many things to be found in the Delta Quadrant, but neither of them expected these discoveries to be quite so personal. A story about love and loss, hope and pain, and about how finding your soulmate may change everything... or nothing at all. Not strictly canon, but - as Tom Paris would say - in visual range of it.

"We prefer permanence. The reward of relationships that endure and grow deeper with the passing of time." - Kathryn Janeway, Prime Factors

There was nothing simple about their relationship, and there never had been, but at its beginning stood a simple fact: She knew him long before they met.

Starfleet Tactical had supplied Tuvok and her with detailed intelligence reports about the Val Jean and its crew before his undercover assignment. She remembered long hours spent poring over those reports, discussing their angles and implications with her chief of security.

"If you are to become one of them and be convincing at it, you have to understand their motivations," she had told him.

"That might pose quite a challenge," Tuvok had said, still scanning the brief CV Tactical had complied on B'Elanna Torres. "Most of their motivations seem devoid of logic or even common sense."

"You are thinking like a Vulcan again," Kathryn had told him. "Humans and many other humanoid species are led by their emotions. It's all there - fear, hope, a desire for revenge, greed, anger - our most primal instincts are embodied in those people. Take him," she nodded at a picture of Chakotay, Maquis commander and former Starfleet officer, "he's burning with rightful anger, with a desire for vengeance and the more bloody kind of justice. He's also convinced that he is doing the right thing, protecting his people and their culture. Here's a potential martyr for the cause. But I don't think we should underestimate him."

"He is a potential martyr with Starfleet command training," Tuvok said

"Precisely."

And now that same square face was staring back at her from the main viewscreen. He frowned when she called him by his name, unaware of the fact that she had been reading up on him and his crew for weeks. She recognized Tuvok in the background and had to fight down a sigh of relief.

Considering what she knew about Chakotay and the Maquis, he proved to be surprisingly reasonable. They were armed when they came aboard, but she did not blame him for being cautious, not after she had just told him that her mission was to literally come and get him.

His stance became a lot less friendly, though, when she greeted Tuvok as the old friend he was. There was something fierce in those angular features and dark eyes, a smoldering fire that wasn't too far beneath the surface. He kept strangely calm, but his anger was an almost tangible force that vibrated in the small space between them. And not just anger. Disappointment, too, sharp and bitter.

His reaction to Tom Paris was more straightforward, maybe because this second betrayal hurt more. Chakotay understood loyalty, she knew that much from his file. In his eyes, Tuvok could be excused as having performed a duty he was honor-bound to do. Tom Paris had no such excuse, and Chakotay advanced upon him like an angry bull.

Until she stepped into his way.

Suddenly, she was right in front of him. Not small for a woman, but slender. He could have pushed her out of his way easily, but there was something in her gaze that stopped him. A commanding presence, a determination that was a force to be reckoned with. She looked up at him, her eyes stern and unafraid.

Chakotay took a step back, which was something that did not happen very often. He watched her evaluate the situation, decide and formulate a course of action in the span of a few moments and could not help but be impressed. She definitely knew what she was doing.

This assessment of her character was affirmed when he told her about his broken leg on the stairways and she immediately grasped the meaning of those words, instantly turning away from him and focusing on getting Tuvok out safely. Here was a woman who didn't waste time, energy or other essential resources on sentimental feelings. Command material indeed. It was tragic twist of fate that he was coming to admire the very person who was going to leave him behind to face an uncertain and quite possibly deadly short future.

Paris' goddamn stubbornness won him a second chance to admire Captain Janeway's methods. Unwittingly, he called her captain when she asked him whether or not he could hold off the enemy vessels. Maybe it was a remnant from his Starfleet days, this instinctive response to a strong commander. It wasn't exactly that he rolled onto his back in submission, but he acknowledged her as a superior.

Chakotay wondered what was happening here and decided that he didn't particularly like it. Which did not stop him from transporting his people onto her ship and placing all of their fates in her hands. It was the only logical choice, he told himself, their best shot at survival in this hostile environment.

Holding B'Elanna back when she rebelled against Captain Janeway's decision to destroy the array was merely a consequence of that choice.

"She's the captain."

I just hope she really knows what she is doing. He had learned to trust his instincts, but this was a big leap of faith.

He watched her; stoic, stern and unafraid, as she issued the command to fire. Watched their one hope of getting back where they had come from burst into flames.

This is crazy. A recurring thought. It resurfaced when she invited him to become her first officer.

"Are you sure?" he asked, admiring her chutzpa. "Tuvok seems the logical choice."

"Chakotay, let me be frank with you," she said, her face as open as her words, "I have lost far too many people today. I need your crew to become a part of this mission, or we will never make it home. And they would never follow Tuvok. In their eyes, he's a traitor. I need you."

The words in their finality and inescapable truth sent shivers down his spine. This was fate at work.

"I accept." He had never had that choice, and they both knew it.

"We're alone," she told them a few hours later on the bridge, where he stood stiffly upright in his strangely familiar Starfleet uniform. But he did not feel alone. His life line had just become intertwined with Kathryn Janeway's and he had a feeling that this was going to be his longest journey yet.

Episode: Caretaker