These characters and situations are the property of Viacom, Inc. I borrowed them,
and will give them back, cleaned up and ready for duty, as soon as I'm done with
them. This story is for DLR and LRB, for reasons they already know.

THE ONLY ONE
by YCD

I was the only one who saw them. The rest of the bridge crew guessed, of course,
but they weren't there--they can only imagine. I managed to keep Harry and Kes
from seeing, and Tuvok...I think he didn't want to know. Tom begged me to tell
him what I saw, but I never have. Maybe one day, if we're together, if he's
serious about it, I'll tell him. It would make me feel good to tell someone I
trusted--some night, lying in the same positions as they were, together. It
calls for--a kind of reverence, almost. That really sounds stupid, doesn't it,
but I don't know how else to describe how I felt when I saw them.

Thinking back on it, I'm still jealous. Not of her, but of them: what they had.
He looked so right with her, same as he always has beside her on the bridge. I
think that was the end of my fantasies about him, at least the end of my
fantasies about having him all to myself. He didn't belong with me any more than
he belonged with Seska.

I guess that was also the first time I stopped thinking of her as an entity unto
herself. Captain of a starship. It always seemed fitting that she should be on a
different level than the rest of us, so I guess I never stopped to wonder whether
she had feelings and needs that weren't getting expressed.

My relationship with Chakotay is pretty complicated. Before that Bothan came
along, I thought my feelings about him were like the way I felt about my
father--I always wanted to please him, I went out of my way to please him, but I
could never get it right. In fact, the things I did which I thought would make
him proud of me always backfired. But sometimes he would praise me in ways I
never expected, like fighting to make me chief engineer of this ship. I remember
my father fighting with my mother, trying to get her to let me take music
lessons, when she kept insisting that I didn't have the talent or the patience,
no Klingon female should waste her time on it...he said he'd been listening to
me, and thought I was trainable. Of course, he didn't stick around--he let my
mother make the final decisions about how I should be educated.

I suppose Chakotay did something similar when he turned me over to a starship
captain for mentoring. Not that I'm blaming him for that--it was the best thing
he ever did for me. But, at first, I didn't like feeling like it was important to
him that I fit in with Starfleet. It wasn't my being Klingon that Chakotay didn't
like, though; ironically, it everything else that made me Maquis. My temper, my
refusal to stick with rules if there was an obvious advantage to breaking them--
things I blame on my Klingon blood, but sometimes I think those are the parts of
me which make me strong, and quick on my feet, and a good engineer. Getting split
in half taught me a lot about that, even if he didn't understand.

After the Bothan got me started, I did let myself have fantasies about him--him
and me. I'd thought a lot about him and Seska before, probably more than I should
have. I told myself it was because she was my friend, and later, because he was
my friend, and she had hurt him. But I spent a lot of time wondering what he was
like as a lover. My own fantasies were pathetic, it sort of disgusts me to think
about them now. If they'd just been about sex, it would have been OK, but I had
stupid little dreams about him telling me he loved me, how he'd go with me
anywhere, even if I decided to leave the ship, all sorts of crap that had nothing
to do with what he's really like as a person. I didn't try to work out any of the
real problems we had in our friendship, like how embarrassing I find some of his
spiritual beliefs and how much I enjoy killing the food I eat.

I almost told the captain what the Bothan made me see, when I ran into her that
night in the mess hall--now I'm so glad that I didn't. Probably I realized even
then that he was falling in love with her. I was so angry with her, for a long
time, after she almost abandoned him to Seska and the Kazon and then put him on
report for recovering our technology from them, just because he didn't do it by
the book...damn, I don't like to think about that. Especially since he thought
she was right on both counts. She and I are nothing alike in that regard. There
are times when you have to think with your fists--I do it too often, but I wish
she'd do it a little faster sometimes...

But then, I am in no position to judge her, or to try to put myself in her shoes.
She and Chakotay have that in common, the way they can immerse themselves in
causes to the point where they seem to have lost their common sense. Even when he
was in the Maquis, he was still Starfleet, and I never was even while I was at
the Academy--I was in the Maquis to be a rebel, not because the defense of the
colonies had overwhelmed every other committment in my life. I guess part of my
crush on Chakotay had to do with that selflessness, and the fact that he never
hurt anyone needlessly, no matter what they'd done to him.

Totally different from my crush on Tom, which is just as embarrassing in a
different way. At least I'm starting to be able to admit that it's a crush. A lot
like the ones I had at the Academy, on those red-blooded human Starfleet golden
boys, pride of the Fleet. That's what Tom Paris makes me think of. Sure, I know
he wasn't always a golden boy--stint in the Maquis, stint in jail--but compared
to me, he's a prince. Son of an admiral, made it through the Academy. Really he
only made two big mistakes, unlike me, who's made dozens. He's never screwed up
with Janeway, which is not something I can say.

Then again, Tom doesn't hold anything I did in the Maquis or Starfleet against
me, and he doesn't need me to find inner peace or contact my animal guide for him
to be comfortable with me. He's seen me in pretty bad shape, and he wasn't
afraid, and he didn't pity me--or if he did, he turned it into identification.
He's the only person I've really been able to talk to since we've been out here.
I know it's ridiculous to think that he could find me attractive, on this ship,
with Kes and Kaplan and Henley and the Delaney sisters. He tells people that he
and I are friends, but to Tom, that probably just means I'm un-fuckable. Great.

He had a harder time than anyone when we left Janeway and Chakotay, I think.
Harry showed it more, and stuck his neck out about it, but Tom was really
hurting--so much that he couldn't even talk about it, or lash out about it. I'm
not sure exactly how he feels about Chakotay these days, after whatever happened
between them in the Maquis and then that whole business with the Kazon and
Jonas...but it's pretty intense. Lots of guilt, and wanting to measure up. It's
not enough for him that Janeway thinks he's wonderful; he wants Chakotay to think
so, too. He was trying his damndest to be a good officer, and do whatever Tuvok
ordered, because he thought it was what Janeway and Chakotay would have wanted.
But I know it was killing him. I think he was pretty upset that Tuvok put me
instead of him on the away team to retrieve them, but he didn't say anything.

The day we reached the planet where we'd left them, Harry was bouncing around the
bridge, but I don't know if it even occurred to him that Tuvok might let him beam
down--I guess we all suspected Tuvok would go down himself, give the captain and
commander the antidote, and turn himself in for whatever sort of discipline they
chose. We knew Kes would have to go to administer the medicine, but Tuvok really
shocked me when he told Harry and myself to report to the transporter room. I was
going to ask, why me? It seemed obvious that he chose Harry because Harry made
such an impact on the decision to contact the Vidiians, and Harry's still
grateful--it made a big difference in his level of trust with Tuvok. I guess
maybe Tuvok thought Chakotay might want to see me. Tuvok might have been trying
not to think about Chakotay's feelings for Janeway, but I don't think he missed
noticing how I felt about Chakotay. Vulcans catch on to a lot more emotion than
they want to admit.

So we beamed down, knocked on their door, and didn't get any answer. We knew they
were nearby because the ship's sensors had picked up their readings in the area--
I suppose that what we should have done was sat down and waited for them to come
home. But, since I was leading the away team, I felt like we should do something
productive, so I ordered Harry and Kes to fan out and look for them in the
immediate area. They wandered behind the shelter toward the deep woods, where
they were getting some primate readings, while I took what looked like a
deliberately carved path through the trees in the direction that my tricorder
indicated led to a river.

Mentally, I was trying to piece together what we saw when we first arrived into a
picture of their life there: the shelter, patched as if it had recently
experienced some storm activity; some plants growing in a garden which also
looked recent; no real sign of scientific work, which could mean that the captain
had made a breakthrough, but could also mean that she'd already given up trying.
There was some large object which looked like it was being carved into furniture
sitting off to the side by the door, and some clothes--mostly Janeway's--drying
on a line in back near the bathtub. It didn't look like they'd been in the
shuttle since their arrival, and from what I could see through the windows, the
shelter looked cozy...like they were comfortable there, at home.

I followed the water a little way, watching the currents and wondering whether
they'd fished, until I remembered that Chakotay wouldn't eat fish. Maybe Janeway
fished just to pass the time, like people used to do on Earth. How did they spend
what must have been very long days here? Janeway had her research, and Chakotay
appeared to have several little projects he was working on, but without the
cosmos to explore and the ship to run--and without other people to talk to or the
holodeck to distract them--they must have been bored out of their minds
sometimes.

And what if they hadn't been getting along? It was possible--Janeway was such a
stickler for routine and common sense, and Chakotay might have wanted to go off
and meditate without warning her. She might have resented the chores, or he might
have resented her research since he wasn't as qualified to do anything
scientific, who knew what people might find to bicker about when they were stuck
with each other and nobody else for the rest of their lives...

Then I saw them.

They were in the shade, which is why I didn't notice them immediately from a
distance. Curled up, not really touching one another--his knee may have been
bumping the back of her thigh, and his fingers uncurling against her back,
accidentally. They weren't embracing, exactly.

But they were naked. Her hair was down, spread out above her head like a fan, as
if she wanted it to dry while she was sleeping. One of her hands was curled under
her chin and the other was resting on her thigh. She looked like she might have
been chilly--her legs were partway drawn up, and her nipples were hard. Maybe
she was just dreaming. He was more stretched out, like a protective wall behind
her with one arm over his head, shielding her from whatever might come out of the
woods.

He was as beautiful as I'd ever imagined--I'd seen him without his clothes a
couple of times in the Maquis, once even walked in on him and Seska, but I never
saw him relaxed like this. He had almost no hair on his body, and his skin was
bronze in the shade, even darker than usual next to her soft white back--he
looked almost as dark as me. And big, big hands and feet. His penis was big even
flipped sideways and flaccid--of course I looked. I looked at his chest, and the
curve of his ass, and the wave of muscle where his belly descended into his
groin. His hair had grown some. He seemed to have lost weight, but that might
just have been the position he was lying in.

She was beautiful too, maybe even more than I'd imagined because I never thought
about it--I rarely saw her out of uniform, and in uniform she was always the
captain. She looked so much more fragile without it, pale and thin, much younger.
I guess I never wanted to think about the captain as someone who was smaller and
more frail than me. And if I'd thought of her as beautiful, before, on the ship,
I would have recognized the feeling on his face whenever he looked at her, and
the way he looked for her whenever he entered a room. That wasn't only the
interest of a first officer protecting his captain, but a man following a woman
he can't get enough of. They looked like a painting--the dark green grass, the
light blue towel they were lying on, the pink and gold of their skin all
contrasting so that it almost didn't look real.

Or maybe it looked too real. I'm not sure what it was that made me know that I
was seeing the aftermath of love, not just swimming. Maybe because her hair
couldn't have spread out like that without someone else's hands, stroking and
combing the strands into that radiant pattern. Maybe it was the position of his
head curving towards hers. Or just how close together they were lying, without
the slightest hint of discomfort or arousal. I was willing to bet that whichever
one woke first would wiggle the couple of centimeters to touch the other, and
press against the skin, maybe taste it. They were probably salty, and sticky like
ripe fruit, and even if they were tired from splashing in the water and rolling
in the grass, they would wake up, and fit themselves together--

I stepped backwards, not wanting to look away, but wanting to stop Harry and Kes
from seeing. It was selfish really. I wanted the vision all to myself, though I
said I was protecting their privacy. Maybe I was. The rest of the crew might have
thought I'd misinterpreted whatever it was I saw. Sometimes, when they seem very
comfortable together on the bridge, I think, maybe I did. Maybe that scene didn't
mean what I thought. I bet Chakotay grew up swimming nude, and after enough time
with him, alone with him, maybe she just stopped bothering with the suit.

But I don't really believe it. I don't think Kes does, either. When I stumbled
back to where we'd separated and called the other two, telling them we had to get
back to the ship right away, Kes immediately looked past me to where I'd left
Janeway and Chakotay, with a surprised, happy expression on her face--she wasn't
alarmed at my insistence that we leave, the way Harry was. Kes probably knows for
sure, anyway, since she did their medical exams after they got back to the ship,
but she would never violate patient confidentiality by telling anyone.

I didn't really have to spell it out for Tuvok. After we beamed back, I asked to
speak to him alone. I told him that we didn't see them right off, we didn't want
to go into their shelter unannounced, and it had occurred to me that just
dropping in on them without any warning might be more difficult for them than if
we gave them some notice that we were coming. We'd already talked about this
before, of course, when we made the decision to beam down--Tuvok was afraid that
if we gave Janeway too much notice of our impending arrival, she might demand to
know how we'd gotten a cure, and order the ship out of there before any Vidiians
could pursue it to the planet. We'd taken an awful risk telling Denara Pel what
afflicted the captain and had forced us to leave her and Chakotay: if she'd told
anyone else, other Vidiians could have shown up at the planet to try to take
their organs.

Tuvok asked me if I knew where Janeway and Chakotay were, and I said, "I think I
saw them from a distance." He didn't ask me why I didn't try to speak to them, so
I left it at that. After a minute, he dismissed me so he could try to contact
them by communicator. I don't think he was at all surprised. If anything I think
he was hoping we'd stumble across them in just such a compromising position...
though I'm not sure why I think that. I know he resents Chakotay, but I also
think
Janeway's happiness is very important to him. I wonder if that has anything to do
with why he didn't beam down himself.

Now I'm not so sure we did the right thing, not letting them know we know. I can
see that Chakotay's in agony, and I watch her holding herself back, because they
think it's impossible to stay together like they were. If they knew we knew,
they'd just have to deal with it, and go on from there. There would be no reason
for secrecy, nor for them to keep up this ludicrous distance which is bad for the
whole ship's morale as well as for them. I want Tom to drop the kind of remark I
was afraid he'd let slip, early on, so she'll know we know. Probably she'll be
horrified, but there won't be any way to take it back, and sooner or later she'll
realize that it doesn't make a difference in how we think of her as our
commanding officer, or of him.

Sometimes when I see her sitting alone in the mess hall, I want to go to her and
say, Captain, we all know about you and Chakotay, let him make you happy. I can't
do that right now--she's still my commanding officer, we're not friends. Not that
kind of friends. Maybe we never will be. Still, one day I'm going to tell her, if
nobody else does. Maybe if I find somebody. She'd be happy for me--Chakotay
would, too, even if it was someone like Tom and he didn't completely approve.
She'd tell me she was happy for me, and I could tell her then. I could say, you
know, I wanted to get back home more than anything when we got stuck out here, I
wanted it so much I disobeyed a direct order and risked my job. But this is our
home now,and we have all changed. Even you, even if you don't want to see it--we
can all see it. Don't be happy for me, be happy yourself, there's nothing greater
you could do for this crew than that.

I don't know if she'd listen. She might pretend to misunderstand. Still, I owe it
to her to tell her. I was the only one who saw them.