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Chakotay racked his pool cue and turned from the table, feeling old and defeated as he couldn't remember ever feeling. The Delta quadrant was getting to him. Not tonight but one day soon, he was going to have to accept the fact that he'd die out here, alone, without ever seeing his family again or having a family of his own. He'd been coming to this realization for months, but the final truth was too harsh a light to face at this late hour. He'd sleep on it, dust himself off, and move on.
“I’d better call it a night,” he told Tom Paris, who leaned on the table across from him with a wolfish eye on the billiard balls, calculating his winning shot. Always an angle with Tom, Chakotay thought. It had grown wearisome. Everything had. “I’m way off my game tonight.”
Tom set his cue on the felt and took a tentative step into the path between Chakotay and the door, aware as always of the destructive potential of the big man's fists when provoked.
“I know what’s bothering you,” he said. “I don’t mind listening if you want to talk.”
Chakotay rolled his neck like a boxer getting ready to step into the ring. Tom adjusted his stance, making sure his own route to the door was clear. “What is there to talk about? One day I think she cares, the next she’s moving in with some alien she’s known a week.”
“Under mind control! B’Elanna and I didn’t even know each other down there.”
“Sure, under mind control.” Chakotay gave a dismissive wave and rubbed his eyes. “Fine. It doesn’t matter.”
Tom turned quickly toward Sandrine, who was wiping down the bar and eyeing her last two customers with badly hidden impatience.
"Can I offer you gentleman anything?" she said with the same charming smile she'd have if the bar were overrun by Hirogen again.
“Two glasses and a bottle of your oldest synthehol,” Tom said. “We’ll close up when we’re done.”
After a quick negotiation, Tom had his bottle and Sandrine had disappeared to whatever constituted her holographic personal life. He gestured to the bar stools.
“Have a seat.”
Chakotay eyed the door, sighed, and accepted with a nod. “I appreciate the gesture, Paris, but it’s not going to” – he began as he pulled out a stool, but Tom interrupted.
“I can’t let you go on like this, pal. You’ve been friend zoned. All the classic signs are there.” He poured two shots with businesslike efficiency and pulled a stool right next to Chakotay. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for months – heck, years – but I figured it was none of my business. Then with me and B’Elanna so happy, I felt mean pointing it out.”
Chakotay’s eyebrows lifted in skepticism as he accepted the glass. “But not anymore?”
Tom shook his head. “Not after what just happened planet-side. You’re in pain, my friend, and rightly so. I would’ve been devastated if I’d been part of the rescue team and found B’Elanna snuggled up with some other guy.”
Chakotay downed his shot. “Is some part of this supposed to make me feel better?” He wiped his mouth and slammed down the glass.
Tom drank and poured again for both of them. “Not necessarily better, not right away, but you need to take some action. You can’t let things go on the way they are.”
Chakotay’s face twisted in frustration. “I’ve tried a hundred times, Tom. She always finds a way to change the subject, create a distraction. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Exactly. She’s turned you into her brother, and you’ve let her. The only time she pays any attention to you is when some other woman wanders across your path.”
"What are you talking about?" Chakotay drank, grabbed the bottle, and poured the refills himself this time.
"Haven't you noticed how you rise up her priority list every time another female shows an interest in you? Even your date with Species 8472 had her practically waiting for you on the transporter pad. She's not blind, she's just complacent."
A sigh that was almost a low growl rose from Chakotay. "Watch what you say about your captain."
Tom stretched an arm across the bar and faced Chakotay. “Okay — see if this doesn’t sound familiar. She’s got you in a place where you exist solely to back up her command decisions and make her feel like she’s the greatest thing in high-heeled captain boots. Remember the last time we made first contact on a non-mind controlling M-class planet, and she asked you to help her pick out things for the baby shower at the central market?’
“We had a nice time that day!” Chakotay leaned onto both arms. “That was one of the last times I really felt close to her.”
“Nope.” Tom made a slicing gesture. “Friend zone. Women do not take men shopping when they’re panting after you. It’s a buddy job, not a man job.”
Chakotay coughed into his drink. “A man job? Has your brain returned to the twentieth century again, Paris?”
“Did you carry the packages for her?” Tom asked.
Chakotay’s shoulders stiffened. “Of course.”
Tom sighed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you used to have dinner in your quarters or hers all the time, right?”
“Right.”
“And are you still doing that?”
“Yes. Well. We’ve both been busy. More often it’s the mess hall, and not usually dinner, but that doesn’t mean — ”
“Right. She only wants to see you in public. You’re her escort to every crew party, but there’s never a party in her quarters, she never has time for that, you get what I’m saying?”
Chakotay pushed away his glass. “This is juvenile, Paris.” He rubbed at a water mark that had seeped into the polished wood, marring its timeworn beauty.
Tom leaned closer, into Chakotay’s personal space. “Or how about this. When was the last time she paid you a really sincere compliment?”
Chakotay shifted away. “She told me – or actually, Seven told me the captain told her that she trusts me more than anyone on board, just a few weeks ago.”
Tom sat back, momentarily impeded. “Oh. Well that’s nice. But she didn’t say it to you, did she? Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because Seven’s the one who questioned my loyalty, when her cortical node malfunctioned.” Chakotay gripped the bar with one tense hand. “This is not helping, Paris!” His head came up angrily.
“Will you at least agree with me that you’ve been friend zoned? Because once you acknowledge it, I can tell you how to handle it,” Tom said, pleading with both hands.
“I’m not even sure what ‘friend zoned’ means! I feel like I’m in the episode where Captain Proton gives his sidekick bad romantic advice,” Chakotay answered with a scowl.
Tom pulled back and poured fresh shots. “Okay, listen. The biggest sign – I mean huge – is that you’ve been after her for what, seven years? And nada. Goose eggs. Have you even gotten a peck out of her?”
Chakotay glared.
“That’s what I thought,” Tom said. “You must be the most sexually frustrated man in the galaxy. No wonder you looked ready to space Jaffen as he was leaving the ship. Nobody would’ve blamed you.”
“He’s not the only one I’d like to space,” Chakotay said, but his shoulders suddenly drooped. “So your point is that she doesn’t think of me sexually?”
“Doesn’t think of you sexually anymore. I’m sure she did at one point. We all saw it. But I think it all went wrong around the time she got the Dear John letter from her fiancé. To my mind, that was the one point when you had a shot. If you could have convinced her then that the trip home was too long for all these strict Starfleet protocols, and now she was free from Mark, I think you could have gotten in there. My theory, anyway.” Tom looked up to survey Chakotay’s thoughtful expression. “Don’t you think so?”
“It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard out of you,” Chakotay answered. “But still, we’re such close friends. Best friends. I think she’s just waiting for that wormhole that will bring us home, and then we’ll have a chance.”
Tom shook his head hard. “Nope, that’s the worst sign of all. If a woman tells you she likes you as a friend, it’s not some game she’s playing with you. That’s the space you occupy in her mind. Friendarooni. You have to take her seriously.”
Chakotay pushed away from the bar in exaggerated surrender. “Okay, I give up. I’m friend zoned. What’s the cure, Captain Proton?”
Tom rose, straightened his unzipped uniform jacket, and delivered his prescription with a dramatic flourish. “You have to cut her off.”
Chakotay blinked. “How exactly is that going to work? I’m on duty next to her every single day.”
“I mean personally. You have to move on completely. Date other women openly. Let her see it. It’s your only chance to put this behind you.”
“What if I don’t want to put it behind me?”
Tom put an arm around Chakotay to lead him toward the door. “Not an option. If your heart isn’t in it, she’ll smell it, and you’ll just look more pathetic. Nope, you have to make up your mind that as of this moment, Amal Kotay is back on the market. Let the ladies beware! Show them some swagger!”
Chakotay chuckled. “That’s absurd. How am I supposed to forget about her when she’s right beside me?”
Tom looked Chakotay up and down. “Maybe by pursuing someone who’s nearby almost as often. What about Seven of Nine?”
Chakotay snorted. “Seven of Nine? Are you insane? She’s almost young enough to be my daughter! I’d be the laughing stock of the ship!”
Tom tilted his head. “I don’t think so. I think every man on board from Harry down to the lowest ranking crewman on the lowest deck would look at you like you’d just grown a few inches. I mean yeah, she’s Borg, but look at her.” He gave a low whistle.
“You really think so?” Chakotay stared back at Tom. “I’ve never thought of her that way at all. She’s so stiff and … sterile. I can’t even imagine putting my hands on that metal suit she wears. Whereas with Kathryn …”
“Whoa there,” Tom interceded with a hand on Chakotay’s chest. “Hearing your fantasies about the captain would be just a little too much like hearing my dad’s fantasies about my mom. I beg you, keep that to yourself.”
Chakotay’s mouth fell open. “You don’t want to hear how I feel about the captain, but it’s okay to pimp me out to Seven? You are in fine form tonight, Tom. I need to get back to my quarters and get some sleep.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder and shoved open the door.
Tom shouted at Chakotay’s departing back, “Just think about what I said! You know I’m right!” He turned toward Sandrine’s impressive collection of bottles behind the bar. “That ought to liven things up a little around here,” he said to the empty room, and poured himself another.
#
“You can’t avoid me forever, Paris.”
Tom kept a poker face on the far side of the hearing room when the message flashed up from Chakotay. His eyes scanned the panel of admirals before them, then Captain Janeway’s back ahead and to his right, where she faced their interrogators from a table immediately in front of the raised dais. It had been less than a week since Seven turned to Chakotay in the middle of a small homecoming reception for the Voyager senior staff and the Pathfinder staff and said, “Commander, I wish to end our dating activities. I believe we both have better options to explore now that we are back on Earth.” Her words had clanged like a badly tuned gong in a spontaneous break in conversation.
Everyone in the room had turned to stare at the two of them, except for Tom, who watched the captain leaning in to speak to Admiral Paris under the noise of conversation in the room, then breaking off mid-sentence at the sound of Seven's voice. He watched Janeway slowly come around toward Seven and Chakotay, head turning first, then her body gradually aligning as if to a magnetic pole so that she stood facing them, waiting with the others for Chakotay to respond. He saw how white her fingers grew against the glass she held, the small twitch along her jawline, and the way her eyes focused a little to the side of the main event, not quite looking at Chakotay or Seven, as if fighting to maintain control.
Chakotay stood rooted to the spot for a few long seconds, speechless as the entire party waited for him to say something. Finally he said in a voice that they all strained to hear, “If that’s how you feel, Seven, that’s fine" and made a beeline for the door, clunking his half full wine glass onto a convenient desk as he went. Seven turned to the doctor and asked him what new databases he had accessed since they last conversed. The others went back to their conversations. Nobody but Tom seemed to notice how Janeway bolted her wine before giving the admiral the most determined of her many determined expressions and continuing their discussion of the crew's psychological evaluations. A few short words had tattooed themselves over and over across the inside of his head: Chakotay’s going to kill me. Chakotay’s going to kill me. If a life debt had ever really existed after he saved Chakotay on the Ocampa home planet, surely Tom had exhausted that chit long ago.
Now, trapped in the hearing room with the cursor under Chakotay’s message blinking on his PADD, Paris tapped out a reply with one hand:
“Not avoiding you. Debriefing 12 hours a day, up with baby all night. How are you?” He leaned forward to see all the way down the row and across the aisle to where Chakotay sat behind Janeway, in almost the same position he’d held on the bridge all those years, only now they were both seated and separated by a metal rail between the spectators and the witness table.
“Did you consult with your senior staff on the decision to turn over Federation holo-technology to the Hirogen?” some over-upholstered admiral was droning. Tom caught Chakotay’s eye and did a little eyeroll toward the admiral, trying to draw a smile. Chakotay glared and sat back so that Tom couldn’t see his face.
Tom glanced down at the PADD tucked half under his thigh on the hard bench and saw Chakotay’s reply light up the screen: “Do you know what Kathryn said to me?”
Tom leaned forward, caught Chakotay’s eye, and gave his head a shake he hoped would be too small to catch anyone else’s attention. In a moment, the screen read: “She said she had hoped things might be different when we got home, but that ship has obviously sailed.”
Tom lowered his hand to the PADD and managed to reply almost without taking his eyes off the lecturing admiral. Janeway was nodding and making appeasing gestures.
“Of course I consulted my senior staff and took their advice into consideration, but the decision was entirely my own. I take full responsibility.” As she spoke, Chakotay leaned toward her and grasped the rail, red in the face with the effort of keeping silent.
Tom sent over his message. “I’m sure if you talk to her, you can work it out.”
A loud growling, coughing sound, like a bear choking on a small rodent, erupted from the other end of the row. The proceedings halted for a moment as Janeway turned around to see what was happening. She poured water from the small jug at her table, jumped from her chair, and carried the water to Chakotay. As he sipped, her hand settled between his shoulders, gently patting. At last he quieted. Their eyes met and held for a second before she stepped back to the table. The questions resumed.
A moment later, Tom’s PADD registered a new message. “I WAS NOT friend zoned, you moron. She thought we still had a chance and I BLEW IT, thanks to you.”
Tom’s eyebrows shot up. He craned his neck to look for Seven and quickly spotted her two rows back, tapping at her own PADD, oblivious to the proceedings. His hand shot to his PADD.
“Have you told her how you feel?” He let the message fly and waited, fingers tensed around the PADD.
Finally the words appeared. “How can I after she watched Seven dump me?” Chakotay shot back. “I look like an idiot to her – and everyone else.” When Tom leaned out this time, Chakotay was slumped in his seat, chin nearly at his chest, one hand covering the screen of his PADD.
Tom considered and tapped out his message letter by letter, trying to block the screen from B’Elanna’s curious eyes. “Maybe I could talk to her.”
“Don’t you dare,” came the reply. Then, a few seconds later, “Stay the hell away from both of us.” Tom watched, but the screen stayed blank after that.
The afternoon wore on. Occasionally the panel would call up another member of Voyager’s crew to testify, but mostly it was Janeway front and center, next to her uniformed legal counsel. This was not a court martial, but it seemed to be only a step away from a disciplinary proceeding.
When at last everyone rose, the panel exited, and Janeway’s lawyer led her into a side room to confer, B’Elanna grabbed Tom by the elbow and hissed into his ear: “You’re going to tell me what’s going on with Chakotay. Now. Come on.” She led her husband straight through the crowd of Starfleet personnel wandering out of the building, blinking and stretching, into the early evening light. Their nanny sat on a bench near the doors, Miral asleep in her arms. B’Elanna picked up the baby and turned on Tom. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
“It’s nothing, Bé,” he assured her. “Just a dumb conversation we had weeks ago. He’s blaming me for something he did himself.”
B’Elanna lowered her chin and narrowed her eyes as she glared. She began to nod as she said, “This has to do with Seven, doesn’t it?”
He tried to make his face blank and innocent.
“Don’t give me that look, flyboy,” she snapped. “It’s written all over you. That little … episode with Seven and Chakotay, you set that up, didn’t you?” When he didn’t answer, she continued as if he’d said yes. “And now Seven’s dumped him, the captain’s embarrassed and furious and will never go near him again, and we have to fix it. Is that about right?” She lowered her voice as a few heads began to turn toward them, but her intensity only increased as she concluded. “Is it?” she demanded.
Tom nodded in resignation. “Pretty much. But listen, B’Elanna – you’ve got to know, I had good intentions. I figured the captain had friend zoned him and he needed to move on. I was trying to help.”
B’Elanna groaned as Miral began to stir. “Friend zoned?” She shook her head. “If I had a Vulcan life span, I would never live to understand men. And you would never understand women. She was doing her duty, Tom. I – no, never mind, I need to get back to our quarters and nurse Miral. Chakotay’s right over there. Go talk to him.” At Tom’s protest, she added: “Whatever he does or says, remember that you deserve it.” She gestured to the nanny, and they took off toward the residential towers at a quick walk.
Chakotay had left the garden path and crossed the xeriscaped rock face to an overlook that offered a view of the bay and the Marin headlands in the distance. As the rest of the crowd dispersed toward Starfleet's well appointed dining rooms and their personal quarters, Tom steeled himself to approach his former first officer. They stood together in silence for several minutes, watching rough water lap at the bridge supports below.
“I owe you an apology,” Tom said at last.
Chakotay looked down at his hands, folded in front of him. “Little late for that."
At this non-violent response, Tom grew bolder. “You’ve got to let me explain to her. Once she knows it was all another one of my stupid ideas, she’ll” – but he didn’t get to finish.
“No,” Chakotay said, in a voice that nearly got lost in the wind. “It might’ve been your idea, but I did it. I gave up on us, and she knows it.” He swallowed. “She even knows that in Admiral Janeway’s timeline, I married Seven.”
“What?” Tom cried.
Chakotay crossed his arms, hunching against the cold wind beginning to blow in from the ocean, looking older than Tom had ever seen him. “So you see, what you did was insignificant compared to what I did.”
Tom scoffed. “But you never did it! You can’t be held responsible for another timeline! That’s – wait. Just wait here.” Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Janeway exiting the building, no longer escorted by her over-large lawyer. Chakotay grabbed his arm but he twisted away and ran toward her.
“Tom!” She stopped and turned to him with a tired smile. “What are you doing lingering around here? Shouldn’t you be with B’Elanna and Miral?” He saw the moment when she spotted Chakotay over his shoulder. Her face went still and a little sad, then regrouped almost instantly. He glanced back, but Chakotay had not followed. He was still at the overlook, staring out to sea.
“Captain, I have to talk to you,” Tom said, panting a little from his run.
She stood at attention reflexively. “I’m listening.”
“This thing with Chakotay and Seven, it wasn’t even their idea,” he said. Her jaw tightened, but she held still. He ran a hand through his hair. “It was my idea. I was drinking with Chakotay, not long after we got back from Quarra, late one night at Sandrine’s.”
One of her eyebrows rose. Tom brought his hands together.
“It hurt him, what went on down there. You and Jaffen.”
Now her eyes dropped. “He never said anything,” she answered. “But I had a feeling.”
Tom nodded. “And you couldn’t say anything, because you were the captain. But I had this theory – I know this will sound stupid now, but I meant well – I had this theory that you just thought of him as a friend, a brother. I told him he needed to move on and find someone else. I was the one who suggested Seven. He laughed when I told him.”
Her eyes flashed at him, looking for a lie. He held his gaze steady, showing his sincerity. “Seriously, Captain. He wasn’t interested. He started trying to tell me how he felt about you and I didn’t want to hear it. Please.” He glanced behind him toward Chakotay’s immobile, uniformed back, framed against the moody sky. When he looked back, Janeway had lowered her head so that he couldn’t see her face. “Don’t punish him for my being an idiot. I think he would have waited for you forever, but I made him think there was nothing to wait for.”
Without raising her head, Janeway said in a low voice, full of emotion: “Go home to your wife and child, Lieutenant.”
The order and the tone of command were so familiar that his feet obeyed before his mind had time to consider. He was halfway to the nearest residence tower when he regained enough presence of mind to look back. Janeway hadn't moved. She was in the middle of the walk where he'd left her, looking slight and battle-weary in her seven-year-old uniform, hair glinting red in the California sun. Chakotay stood facing her from the overlook, at the far end of a winding path lined by rocks and native grasses. Tom held his breath as he crept back toward them under cover of a tall manzanita bush, half expecting the intensity of their shared gaze to light the shrubs on fire. It was now or never.
The two of them stood still for so long that Tom began to wonder if eventually they would walk away without talking. He'd begun to summon the nerve to risk his life by interfering again when Janeway’s right hand twitched slightly — the bare uplifting of a palm, a mere hint of invitation — and Chakotay reacted as if a starting gun had sounded. He startled and moved toward her at a quick pace that turned to a jog then a full sprint, first following the indirect path plotted between them, then abandoning it to hurdle over boulders and around stands of prickly yucca until he shuddered to a stop right in front of her, so close they were almost touching, toe to toe, as if held apart by a force field.
She put her head back, looked into his face, and rested her hand on his chest. Something passed between them wordlessly, so subtle that Tom couldn’t see, in the instant before Chakotay snatched her into his arms, lifting her onto her toes as she cradled his head against her shoulder. They held each other like flood survivors clinging to an ancient tree for long seconds before Chakotay opened his eyes and drew her face to his with a tender hand. With parted lips, he studied her features, kissed her cheek, her forehead, even her nose before settling at last, inevitably, on her mouth. They melted into each other as if they'd both achieved a plasma state, oblivious to disapproving admirals rubbernecking the spectacle they were making.
Even from his partial view position, Tom could plainly see that this was one of the great kisses, the sort that troubadours and poets had tried and failed to describe adequately since the beginning of history, because they missed the simplicity of it all. The captain and commander were like two objects destined by the laws of physics to come together in the end — the ripe apple and the earth — and here they were, all things converged into the perfect whole, the price paid finally worth the outcome. Despite the setting and the characters — still far too much, for Tom, like watching his mother and father necking on the busy grounds of Starfleet Headquarters — this was a cinematic ending he'd have paid good credits to watch. It was beautiful, real, and lasting, and he'd made it happen. He straightened in his hiding place behind the hedge and let a smug smile take over his face completely.
He was still enjoying this moment of triumph when Chakotay lifted his head, looked straight at him over the top of the bush and said, “I’m not finished with you, Paris.”
END