Chapter Text
“B’Elanna. This has to stop.” They’re in one of B’Elanna’s holodeck programs, which is more or less a firing range populated by Cardassian targets and a few of their dead Maquis comrades. Not exactly Starfleet-approved. Chakotay should probably be more concerned about the program than he is.
“It’s a harmless program,” B’Elanna tells him. “Just keeping your skills sharp. Nice!” She says it as he takes out a Cardassian before it can harm its hostage.
“That’s not what I mean. The turbolift, the shuttle—you could have killed us with that shuttle incident.”
“That wasn’t entirely my fault,” she protests.
“Oh?” He takes cover behind a stand of trees as three Cardassians fire at them.
“Apparently Tom and I…both made a few modifications to the shuttle. Without communicating. They magnified each other.”
Chakotay dodges out to shoot and, embarrassingly, misses. “Since when do you and Tom work together on anything? And what was that with the decontamination chamber?”
“Looks like you’re getting slow, Chakotay!” She shoots all three of them. “What about it?”
“We both went to Starfleet, B’Elanna. Just because the Doctor doesn’t know about all the dirty holonovels involving decon chambers doesn’t mean I believe for a second that you’ve never heard of them, or that—or that Tom hasn’t! Was there even a pathogen to begin with?”
“Of course!” They both dart out to shoot an advancing phalanx of Cardassians. When the—men—have all fallen, he gives B’Elanna a stern look. “Well, there was a pathogen, but let’s just say that the decontamination chamber was ready to go as soon as a likely one appeared.”
“Computer, freeze program.” They’re both breathing hard. His Maquis camouflage clothing feels strange on his body. “Why are you doing this? To torture me?”
B’Elanna frowns at him. “Look, Chakotay, I like having sex with you, but it’s pretty obvious how you feel about the captain.”
“And how is that?”
She raises an eyebrow and doesn’t dignify that with an answer. “Obviously she’s hung up on Starfleet protocol, but we figured—”
“We?”
“Tom and I.” She looks very uncomfortable. “Anyway, we figured that, given enough opportunities, she would get over the protocol issue.”
“So the two of you decided to—periodically trap us?” It’s dangerous to let himself get angry now, surrounding by the holographic bodies of dead Cardassians. “Just hope that Janeway—the captain—would be so overwhelmed by the desire to have sex with me that everything would work out?”
“It seemed like a good idea when Tom and I talked about it!”
“Congratulations, all you’ve done is make things harder for me, not change anything about her! All that will happen is that I’ll cross a line and it will destroy our working relationship!” There’s rage building in him.
“We’ll stop,” B’Elanna says hurriedly. “No more—incidents. I promise.”
“Make sure Tom understands too, B’Elanna. Or you’ll both be spending a lot of time in the brig.”
She looks almost pitying. “All right.”
B’Elanna is the only one here. He can give in to the cold rage inside him. “Computer, change parameters to close combat, safety protocols at fifty percent.”
“Reduction in safety parameters not advised. Please confirm.”
He meets B’Elanna’s eyes and she shrugs. Fifty percent won’t allow any serious injuries. “Confirm reduction, code Chakotay beta 371. Resume program.”
In the sky above, Cardassian ships are engaged in a dogfight with the Liberty; stray torpedo fragments rain down. This is what he’s missed. Grappling with a Cardassian attacker until he can reach his own knife to end it, blood in his teeth and a sharp ache in his side, getting just enough distance to shoot another, sometimes back-to-back with B’Elanna or one of the holographic Maquis comrades, and sometimes all alone, lawless and dangerous. Another Cardassian gets him in a headlock and he has a brief moment to wonder what it will feel like in here when the man snaps his neck, before he finds the Cardassian’s own weapon and stabs it into his side. He’s on his feet again, Cardassian knife in one hand and his own in the other, when everything stops and he realizes that someone has frozen the program again.
He finds B’Elanna in the carnage and she looks horrified, which means she didn’t do it. The holodeck doors are supposed to be locked. Chakotay turns very slowly. One of his ribs grinds as he does it, probably broken. His right shoulder is dislocated and one eye is swelling shut. His hands are throbbing.
Janeway stands on the high rocky outcropping just within the holodeck doors. Half her face is illuminated in chiaroscuro by the frozen flash of a bomb that just detonated. And there’s the horror in her eyes he’s been waiting to see, the final understanding of what he is beneath his performance as her first officer: true Maquis.
The emotion on her face only lasts for a second. “Commander Chakotay,” she says, and her voice is so steady that you’d think he wasn’t surrounded by the bloody bodies of Cardassians. “You weren’t answering. You’re needed on the bridge.”
He’ll never understand how she can process things so quickly. His brain is still stuttering through what she’s just seen.
“Computer, end program,” B’Elanna says quietly. The bodies vanish and suddenly they’re all much closer in the emptiness of the holodeck. B’Elanna slips past Janeway and out the doors.
When Janeway turns to follow, Chakotay can’t help it. “Captain,” he chokes out. He can’t flip the switch as easily as she can. “I’m sorry you—”
“Even on the holodeck, you have to answer if someone is trying to contact you.” Janeway says it like he was at a noisy concert instead of the middle of battle.
“Captain—”
She looks him up and down. He’s very aware of the blood, the filth, the torn clothing, everything that tells her that the safety protocols were reduced. “Go to sickbay before you come to the bridge.”
The agony he feels is far worse than anything physical. “Yes, Captain,” he finally manages. She waits for him to leave and he walks past her, careful not to brush against her even slightly. He winces and pulls away when she puts a hand on his dislocated shoulder and she doesn’t ask why.
B’Elanna knows him well enough to come to his quarters that night. “I should order you to delete that program,” he says. His shoulder is still tender—the Doctor had frowned at him and put it in a sling, apparently believing that it was a holodeck boxing injury. So he lets her do the work of removing both of their uniforms, lets her push him down gently on his bed instead of their usual against-the-shared-wall, lets her kiss him surprisingly tenderly and says, “This is the last time, isn’t it.”
“I don’t think it’s helping either of us,” B’Elanna says. She slides down his body, tells him “Be glad I didn’t inherit Klingon teeth,” and takes him in her mouth. It’s the first thing that’s felt good all day and he lets himself react, lets himself be noisy, because they’ve never tried to hide it before and there’s no point in changing that now.
* * * * *
He expects the holodeck incident to affect Janeway’s behavior toward him. A chill in their interactions. A flinch when he gestures quickly. No more smiles. It would help, he thinks. He would have to accept the truth about the limits of their relationship, if she pulled back like that.
Instead, the next day, Janeway seems to go out of her way to touch him. They’re all innocuous touches, of course—a hand on his arm, his shoulder, his back. She stands just a little too close to him when she shows him a report on a PADD or a ship schematic, when they walk out of her ready room onto the bridge. It almost feels like she’s trying to reassure him that what she saw doesn’t change her opinion of him—her trust in him—and he wishes he could believe it. Every time she says “Chakotay,” he thinks she’s going to finally say something more, but she never does.