Chapter Text
A day to think turns into five—not, he truly believes, because Kathryn is avoiding giving him a decision, but because life in the Delta quadrant is truly hell sometimes. Some of the crises are internal—a thief has been stealing from Kes’s gardens, two lieutenants are fighting over who gets a particular ensign to work on their pet projects—and some are external, like the Kazon battle cruiser that always seems to be an hour behind them, forcing them to take a corkscrewing path back toward the Alpha quadrant. And after twenty hours awake, neither he nor Kathryn is about to delay the first opportunity for sleep, just to have a complicated discussion about their relationship.
On the fifth day, Chakotay and Kathryn take four ensigns—two Starfleet, two Maquis—by shuttle to the surface of a nearby moon. Tensions have been running high among the four of them, to the point that B’Elanna refused to have all four in engineering together. There’s no time for things like that, not out here, so Kathryn proposes the solution: “A set of five challenges, each of which can only be solved through the cooperation of two people.”
Chakotay raises an eyebrow at that. “They hate each other,” he says. “It would take them weeks to get through a single challenge, let alone five.”
“They’ll be in two mixed teams. I can only hope that their hatred of each other doesn’t outweigh the competitive desire to beat the other team.” She meets his eyes with a very different kind of look. “And once that’s finally settled—”
“Right. Yes, Captain.” He nods and goes to round up the wayward ensigns.
Kathryn has designed the challenges, and she leaves him with the shuttle as she goes to get the miscreants started at the first challenge. Team-building exercises have never been Chakotay’s area of strength. He doesn’t know exactly what goes wrong, only that 30 minutes in, he sees a large explosion and an electrical storm approaching on the horizon and Kathryn comms him and Voyager. “We need immediate transport to sickbay for four people.”
“Captain, we’re in a bit of a—situation here,” the Doctor says. “I don’t think that’s advisable—”
“Unless sickbay is on fire, Doctor, you transport them. They need medical attention that we can’t provide down here.”
“Very well. Please try not to injure yourselves as well. I don’t want anyone else exposed.”
Kathryn crests the hill and runs toward Chakotay. There’s something dark and almost animal-shaped in the cloud of dust that follows her, tongues of electricity crackling out from it up toward the storm overhead. She yells into her comm, “Chakotay—”
He’s already locking onto her with the shuttle’s transporter even as he starts the shuttle, and she’s barely fully materialized before they’re lifting off the ground and racing away from the moon. “What was that? One of the challenges gone wrong?”
Kathryn collapses into the seat next to him, gasping for breath. “Something—sensors didn’t detect. It came up out of the earth—like it was summoning the storm.” She coughs hard.
“Voyager, we’ve had to leave the surface of the moon. We’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”
“No, Commander.” The Doctor’s voice is emphatic. “There is some kind of—contagion on the ship. It’s causing inexplicable behavior in the crew. I accepted the emergent patients, but I’m afraid the two of you will need to remain on the shuttle and off the ship until things have calmed down.”
“What do you mean, a contagion?” Chakotay and Kathryn exchange glances. He doesn’t think Tom and B’Elanna would be stupid enough to risk the safety of the entire ship, or that the Doctor would pretend there was something when there wasn’t, but he can’t help being suspicious.
“It appears that one crew member consumed a substance that made him particularly…amorous, which then attracted others to consume the same substance. Now even people who were not initially affected have begun to show symptoms. There is something of an epidemic at this point. I must advise you to remain in the shuttle until I have found a solution.” The Doctor cuts the comm link.
“Why do we have so many substances on Voyager that produce this kind of effect?”
Kathryn laughs a little at that. “I suppose the engineers worked with what they could find.”
“There’s some irony for you,” Chakotay says. “For once, we avoid the—influence.” Voyager looks scarred and vulnerable from the window of the shuttle. It’s dark inside. He can only imagine how hard it is for Kathryn. “But the Doctor will handle it, and we’ll be back on Voyager soon.”
“I guess that’s one way of buying us some time to talk,” she says, and coughs again. When he stands up and goes to find the med kit, she asks, “What are you doing?”
Chakotay locates the tri-ox hypospray and offers it to her. “It sounds like you could use it.”
Instead of taking the hypospray, she tilts her head to the side and pulls her hair back, exposing her neck. “You could help.” The words make something clench around his heart. He carefully holds the hypospray to her neck, administers it with the familiar hiss, and then smooths his thumb over the spot on her neck. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. “That’s much better.”
He takes the pilot’s seat again. “I don’t suppose you’ve had time to—consider.” He almost doesn’t want to hear her answer, he realizes. Until he hears it, at least he can hope.
“I have.” Kathryn takes his hand. “First I want to tell you something. Something about myself. And I need you to—stay calm when I tell you this. Because I need to be able to tell you, and not worry about how you’ll react.”
The numbness settles over him. “All right,”
“You seem to think that because I was in Starfleet, I avoided all Cardassian interaction.” Not at all where he thought this was going. He starts to object and then remembers he’s supposed to be staying calm. “When I was just out of the Academy, I was the junior science officer on the Arias Expedition. It was—more than a scientific mission.” He understands from her eyes what she means. “Admiral Paris and I were captured by Cardassians.”
He controls the instinctive physical reaction, stops it before it becomes visible. This isn’t about him. “I didn’t know that.” He keeps his voice very even.
Kathryn nods. Her voice has taken on a mechanical tone. “They wanted information. I—refused. Then they made clear that they were going to torture us anyway. Not for information, but for—fun.”
That sounds like the Cardassians he’s met. “They tortured you.”
“No. They injured me. Hit me a few times. Then they locked me in a—cell where I could hear Admiral Paris being tortured for hours, screaming until his voice gave out, and even after that, the sounds of him—struggling.” She isn’t looking at him anymore, only staring out into the emptiness of space. “Eventually we were rescued.” She blinks, but her voice doesn’t change. “I fought one as we were escaping. You asked me once if I’d ever killed anyone and I should have told you then—I don’t know. I don’t know if I killed him.” Her shoulders are stiff.
This, he understands. Chakotay puts a very gentle hand on her shoulder. “For you, I think listening to someone else being tortured and not being able to help would be—worse than physical torture.” Kathryn turns, her eyes re-focusing. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That you felt like you couldn’t tell me.”
“You have your burdens,” she says. “I know they’re heavy. I didn’t want to add to them.”
“I want to share your burdens, Kathryn.” She’s still holding his hand with her own and he squeezes it, not hard enough to hurt but just before it. “You can share them with me, always.”
She squeezes his hand hard, once, and then presses her thumb to the pulse in his wrist. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since you left my quarters. I thought about who you are. I thought about what it would be like to have you there with me, to lie in bed with your arms wrapped around me, to drag you into the bathtub with me. To face the Kazon or the Vidiians or whoever else comes along and hates us, and know that you’re not just always there on the bridge, but that you’ll always be there when I go back to my quarters at the end of the night.” She smiles. “Or the end of the morning. And I thought about what it would be like to get to touch you without the excuse of—of near-death, or strange paint, or gas leaks.” She must be able to feel the way his heart is pounding. “And when I did, everything else—Starfleet protocol—felt nebulous, an apparition that stood in the way of both of our happiness.” Kathryn smiles at him and the force of it hits him like a blow. “So—my answer is yes.”
“Yes?” He’s dazed, barely willing to believe it when she’s saying everything she wants to hear. “Really?”
She laughs. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
Chakotay tugs her hand and she tumbles into his lap, her face very close to his. “Never,” he says. He wraps one arm around her, brings the other up to trace the line of her jaw, touch her lips with his thumb and then he leans in to kiss her. It’s slow, sweet. As they kiss he can see it all, see Kathryn trying not to wake him as she climbs into bed next to him, see her pulling him toward the bathtub and insisting “It’s relaxing!” even as he grumbles, see the way she’ll lean into him and they’ll hold each other silently the next time they lose a crew member. He doesn’t know how long the kiss lasts, but it feels like he can envision their entire future together, until—
“Captain! I have identified a solution to the contagion! You and Commander Chakotay may now return safely to the ship.”
“He really has the worst timing,” Kathryn says. She’s pulled back just enough that she can look at his face without going cross-eyed. She leans in and kisses him again, a quick press of lips and swipe of tongue that leaves him chasing her mouth as she stands up. “Come to my quarters tonight?” she says, and there’s the slightest hint of uncertainty in her eyes.
“I’ll be there.” Chakotay takes the helm again and steers them back toward Voyager. In the corner of his eye, he can see Kathryn watching him and he can’t help the silly smile spreading across his face.