****
"Come," Kathryn had called as soon as the door chime sounded.
Chakotay entered Kathryn's quarters only to find her with her head and
left shoulder wedged into the delivery slot of her replicator with
her left
arm crammed far up into the bowels of the device itself. Her service
jacket was crumpled on the floor and the sleeves of her turtleneck
had
been pushed up to her elbows. "Does this mean dinner's gonna be late?"
he asked mildly, laying the book and the padd he'd been carrying on
the
dining table.
"Not if I can help it....Hand me the umm.....: Kathryn snapped the
fingers of her free hand and pointed toward a pile of hand tools laying
on the floor behind her.
"The flow impeller, " Chakotay suggested helpfully, plucking a
screwdriver-like tool from the heap.
"No. No. The ummmm...." Her fingers snapped again, pointed and
waggled.
"The electro-spanner?"
Her palm flattened and demanded; he placed the spanner carefully in
her
hand. He watched as she maneuvered it down and under her body and
somehow forced it inside the dispensing slot, passing it to her other
hand.
"Now if only I can...." There was the sharp snap of breaking plastic.
"Shit! I really didn't want to do that. " The spanner reappeared and
was
tossed backwards toward the jumble of tools. "Maybe if I...." There
was
another snap, but this time it was the sound of electrical arcing.
Kathryn
yelped. She pulled herself from the bowels of her replicator and stuck
her burnt fingers in her mouth. She closed her eyes and blew out a
long
stream of frustration through her nose.
When she opened her eyes, she was blinking rapidly and Chakotay
thought she might be trying not to cry. That surprised him for a moment.
She wasn't the kind of woman who cried casually or easily. He'd seen
her face death with dry eyes.
"Looks like dinner is going to be late."
Chakotay placed his hands on her shoulders in gesture of reassurance.
"It won't be the first time," he reminded her with gentle teasing.
"I'll
survive."
She closed her eyes again and nodded. "It's just that.... Oh, never
mind."
She waved away whatever she had been going to say.
The front of her shirt was smudged with carbon soot, with one large
smear spreading across her right breast. Kathryn looked down at the
mess. "I meant to get changed before you arrived too."
"It really is all right, Kathryn," Chakotay soothed. He released her
as she
turned away to brush at the stain, inadvertently making it worse. "Why
don't you go clean up? I'll cook."
Her raised eyebrow said she wanted to argue, but she allowed herself
to
be shooed toward her bedroom.
Chakotay stood with his hands on hips, studying the malfunctioning
replicator with a experienced eye. He shook his head and muttered at
it.
"What did she do to you this time? Insult your sister? Threaten you
with a phaser? All of the above?" In a louder voice, he called toward
the
other room. "What were we going to having for dinner...before all this
happened?" He was curious. Typically her replicator only failed when
she was trying to coax something unusual or new out of it.
Kathryn's muffled voice wafted from the direction of her bedroom. "
Spring greens with blood orange vinaigrette, coq au vin over
papparadelle. And for desert, I was planning a fruit and cheese plate,
but
it wouldn't take much persuading for me to have cherry trifle instead....."
Her head appeared from around the corner, followed thereafter by the
rest of her body. Her turtleneck had disappeared and she was barefooted,
clad in her tank top and duty pants. Her face looked freshly washed
and
she had apparently had found time to tend to her burns because she
wasn't favoring her injured hand. "Ah-ha! " she exclaimed, moving to
the
sideboard. "At least there's one part of out meal escaped the Janeway
jinx." She grabbed the bottle of wine that stood there and, extracting
two
glasses from inside the cabinet, filled them.
"Quite drinkable," she pronounced after tasting. She held out the second
glass toward Chakotay. "Remember the planet we stopped at in the
Diadem Sector...Viordar, I think. I got this there. I'm not sure what
kind
of fruit they use, but it's alcoholic and it tastes just fine."
Chakotay sipped the wine and pursed his mouth as if he had eaten
something foul. At Kathryn's shocked look, he burst out laughing. "Got
you!"
She swatted playfully at him, missing contact by inches. "For *that*,"
she announced mock sternly, padding toward her bedroom, "*you* owe
*me* dinner."
Chakotay's fingers slid around the outside edge of the face panel on
the
replicator until he found the release catches. He eased the face plate
off,
setting it on the floor.
In engineering matters, Kathryn was a fine scientist and brilliant theorist-
-which was a polite way of saying her hands-on skills left much to
be
desired. His weren't exactly bragging material either. But he had spent
time with a good engineer. Lots of it. In fact, he had spent most of
the
first year of Voyager's journey pulling B'Elanna Torres off various
bulkheads all over the ship, taking her to his quarters where he shoved
a
glass full of Neelix's fruit juice du jour heavily laced with Jabric
Rum
from a bottle he had confiscated off Tom Paris, and letting her rant.
She
alternately marveled over how elegantly Voyager's systems had been
designed and raged at how fragile they were. ["There's no redundancy,"
she had complained to him bitterly late one night when she was well
into
a second glass. "Minimal back-ups. Panels short out every time one
of
the Delaneys sneeze. It's no wonder the Kazon ships are knocking the
crap outta us every time they get a shot past our shields."] B'Elanna
had
spent much of the next five year rewiring and redesigning Voyager.
It
was a tribute to her skills that the ship had survived so many run-ins
with
hostile species. But she had never gotten around to redesigning the
replicators. Instead she'd shrugged and trained every crewmember how
to fix the damned things.
Chakotay fished in his pocket of his slacks, finding the two replacement
modules he'd put there before he'd left his own quarters. He'd repaired
Kathryn's replicator too many times to risk coming to dinner without
spares.
Moments later, repairs completed, he snapped the face panel back into
place.
Grabbing his wineglass--and Kathryn was right, the wine was quite
drinkable--he set about to make dinner.
"It looks lovely."
Her voice startled him; he hadn't heard her return. She had changed
clothes since she had ducked into the bedroom. Now she wore a
sleeveless cowl-necked sweater over slim knit pants. She'd showered
too.
He could smell the faint scent of her shampoo--it was something floral
and vaguely exotic, freesia, maybe, or moonflower-- as she leaned past
him to refill her wineglass.
"Really it's beautiful."
The words ,'So are you.' hovered on lips, but he didn't say them. It
would
be inappropriate. She was his friend, but also his commander. There
were so many things they couldn't say to one another, even during
informal moments such as this. Instead he answered, "Thanks. I hope
you don't mind that I rifled through your cupboards. I saw the candles
and the holders....I hope you weren't saving them for some special
occasion."
She looked over the table arranged with its linen tablecloth and the
burning candles, her eyes shining. "No. It's fine. Really."
Afterwards, they sat in her livingroom as was their habit, she on the
couch, he in the overstuffed wing chair.
The chair was scaled more for someone of his size than hers. Chakotay
tried to recall how long the chair had been in her quarters. Three
years?
Four? He couldn't remember. Just like he couldn't remember if the chair
had been there before they had decided to move the bi-month command
team planning meetings to her quarters, or had appeared afterwards.
Just
like he couldn't remember when the purely business meetings had turned
personal, to literary discussion and stories of home. It seemed like
they
had always been this at ease with each other, always been friends.
Chakotay leaned forward and squinted at the padd that he balanced on
his knee. He was going to have to talk to the Doc about a course of
Retinax afterall. "Well, that's the last item we needed to cover."
"Good." Kathryn slapped her knees lightly and stood. "I'm dying to see
what you made for dessert."
He beat her to replicator and blocked her path. "Na-uh. My surprise,"
he insisted, weaving back and forth to prevent her from seeing the
programmed menu.
She made one last attempt to dodge around him, but he thwarted her.
"Go sit down," he ordered her. "You're such a little kid sometimes."
"I know," she said with wry self-knowledge, "You've told me that often
enough--and not always in the politest terms."
He had, and too often, he reflected. How many time had he flung out
accusations of her acting on some private agenda when she had only
the
crew's best interests at heart? He' d turned their professional disagreement
personal. It couldn't be helped, he supposed, given who he was and
she
was, and Voyager's enforced closed command structure. It made him
wonder if perhaps Kathryn had shown more wisdom that he had given
her credit for when she had decided to deflect his romantic advances.
Would Voyager have been able to survive if they were even more
involved? Whether it would have or not was moot now. He was grateful
that her distance had allowed him to find love at last with Seven.
He put the footed trifle bowl down in the center of the coffeetable
with a
flourish.
She looked up at him with an impish grin of delight. "You made this?"
He gave a scapegrace smile as he sat down beside her. "Actually Neelix
made it," he admitted. I commed him while you were in the shower and
Ensign Knauer brought it by a little while ago. That was who was at
the
door."
She served them both, scooping portions of cake and custard, fruit and
cream onto the plates. The cake was sweet with rum and kirsch, and
she
licked the whipped cream that stuck to her knuckles when she was done
sharing out the dessert.
They made small talk while they ate, and afterwards Kathryn brought
out
a bottle of amber Port and two delicate, antique crystal glasses.
"God, but I am going to miss this," she said sighing, as she leaned
forward to sneak another fingerful of whipped cream from the trifle.
Chakotay furrowed his brow in confusion. "The trifle?"
"No," Kathryn answered, pushing the dessert out of her easy reach.
"Evenings like these. They're going to have to end."
Chakotay was still puzzled. "Why should they?"
Kathryn sighed with fond exasperation and set down her glass so she
could turn slightly and face Chakotay on the couch. "You've never had
a
serious relationship, have you?"
He bristled defensively at the suggestion. "Of course I have. There
was..."
She interrupted before he could begin to enumerate his past lovers.
"No.
I meant living with someone full time....It changes things. All kinds
of
things. In some ways, you have more freedom, but in others, you're
even
more circumscribed. There are expectations...."
He frowned at her evasiveness and wished she would just say what she
meant.
"Women get territorial, " she explained. "Possessive. We don't mean
to,
but it happens."
"If you're suggesting that Seven would feel threatened by our friendship,
you're wrong. Just plain wrong." The idea of it bothered him. Seven
would never make him choose. She loved him; she trusted him
"Perhaps," Kathryn allowed, "But there are more people involved in this
than just Seven....You grew up in a small village, Chakotay, one bigger
than Voyager. You know how it is. People talk. There has always been
a
cerain amount of gossip about our relationship, about how much time
we
spend together. I always felt free to ignore it. But now...." She turned
her palm up, suggesting he should be able to guess the rest. "I won't
see
Seven humiliated."
His anger flared and he didn't bother to tamp it down. He jumped off
the
couch, stalking across the room. "I don't give a damn what people say.
It's none of their business."
"I agree," Kathryn said mildly, coming across the room to place her
hand
on his chest. "But it's going to happen. And we all have to find a
way to
live together with a minimum of conflict."
Her eyes searched his face looking for a sign he understood.
He understood all right; he just didn't like it.
Kathryn's hand dropped as soon as she saw acceptance in his eyes.
"Good. We'll move the planning meeting back to the Ready Room. I
don't know what to suggest about dinner and book discussion. I wish
we
had an officer's lounge or a library. But we don't. I suppose we could
have Neelix set aside a corner table in the Mess. Or...." Her eyes
slanted
up at him with an impish grin forming in them. "Do you think Seven
might be interested in critiquing the relative merits of 17th Century
Italian poets?"
Chakotay stifled a chuckle. "Cinquains and symbolic journeys? I don't
think so. No.... Literature is inefficient," he intoned in his best
Borg
drone imitation.
They both laughed.
And then stood awkwardly when the laughter ended.
It really was ending. He was gaining a lover, but it was costing him
his
closest friend.
"I'd better go, " he said feeling sadness and nostalgia wash over him.
He
needed to leave before he said or did something foolish.
Kathryn nodded, understanding, and walked him to the door.
He collected the book from the sideboard. "I haven't finished Browning
yet."
"Keep it, " she urged, pressing the book back into his hands. "We'll
find
time to talk about it. I promise."
He smiled. "Good. I really was looking forward to hearing your theories
on Paracelsus."
"Same here."
They were at the door now. He needed to find a way to say good-bye, to
explain his complicated feelings for her--and he no idea what to say
or
how to say it. He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek--that was
allowed, wasn't it? He was allowed to kiss a friend on the cheek--and
at
the last moment turned his head slightly to find her lips. She stiffened
slightly, surprised, but didn't pull away. Instead she relaxed into
his
hands, allowing his mouth to slowly caress hers, memorizing the taste
of
fruit and wine on her lips, the slick feel of her lipstick. He could
have
spent a lifetime there, but he felt her hands on his shoulders pressing
him back. Regretfully he straightened up. "Kathryn, I...ah..."
She silenced him with two fingers against his lips. "Don 't," she said,
her
voice command firm, but with an underlying soft huskiness he had never
heard before. "Let me keep my petty delusions."
His right hand came up to curve softly against her cheek. He knew this
would be the last time she would ever allow him even this small intimacy.
"Not so petty, I think." His thumb smoothed lingeringly over the line
of
her cheekbone. "Nor delusions."
She leaned against his hand for moment, before reaching up to pull it
away from her face. "Goodnight, Chakotay."
Oh god. This was real; this was good-bye. He kissed her knuckles.
"Goodnight, Kathryn. Sleep well."
With that, he turned and stepped through the door before he could
change his mind.
******