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The console felt familiar and straightforward under his fingers. In spite of the ten years spent on Ysida, he had not forgotten the configuration of a Starfleet control panel nor how to pilot a shuttle, and there was something comforting about the simplicity of sitting behind the panel, working the buttons and knowing that the shuttle would respond just as he directed it to. It was one small thing he could control in a world that seemed more out of his control than ever.
The synth attack on Mars had alarmed everyone at Starfleet Command, and Voyager-A had been recalled to Earth immediately, along with several other ships. The atmosphere at Headquarters was tense, to say the least, with whispered conversations in the corridors and admirals pulling each other into their offices to speak behind closed doors. It was so uncomfortable that when Admiral Paris had suggested that he inform Kathryn of the situation personally, he hadn’t hesitated to take the assignment. The shuttle ride would give him some time to think, and he thought that Kathryn might take the news better coming from him.
While the synth attack weighed heavily on his mind, he found his thoughts coming to rest instead on Kathryn Janeway. Although he’d spent more than ten years thinking about her and what it would be like to see her again, the reality of the situation had left him feeling confused and uncertain. Looking back now, he wasn’t sure what he had expected. Things had always been the same between him and Kathryn, and he didn’t know why he had thought they would change now. He hadn’t been the only one with dashed expectations, as he had discovered in a conversation with Dal a few days after his return.
“So,” the young alien asked when they were alone, a sly grin on his face, “how was your reunion with the admiral?”
“I’m just glad to be home,” Chakotay replied tiredly.
“That’s it?” Dal asked. “I mean, wasn’t it romantic? Flowers? A candlelit dinner? Umm…” Dal blushed. “Other stuff?”
“Admiral Janeway and I are just friends,” Chakotay replied, feeling a blush creep into his own cheeks.
“But the way she hugged you in the transporter room,” Dal protested. “The way you were looking at each other. I saw you holding hands in the mess hall yesterday.”
“Sometimes friends hold hands. It doesn’t mean they’re lovers.”
Dal placed his hands on his hips, then crossed his arms in front of his body, his face wrinkled in consternation. “No,” he finally said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”
Chakotay chuckled. “It’s true. I’m not lying to you. The admiral and I are good friends, best friends. We have been for a long time.”
“But don’t you want more than that? I mean, it seemed like, on the Protostar that you…” Dal paused, uncertain. “You asked if you were trying too hard. You were so worried about the way you looked before you saw her again. I always thought that was something only a couple would do. And the way you were gazing at each other, I could’ve sworn…” He paused again. “Maybe I just don’t get it. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of examples in my life of happy, normal relationships.”
“My relationship with Kathryn is hardly normal,” Chakotay mused aloud. “You’re not the first one who thought we were romantically involved.”
“Did you ever want to be?”
The simple innocence of the question struck Chakotay, and a myriad of expressions passed over his face, sadness, wistfulness, doubt, nostalgia. “I’d be lying to you if I said I’d never thought about it,” he admitted. “On Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, it just wasn’t possible, and after we got home, things had changed. On Ysida, I thought about it a lot, but in the end, I decided it was better that nothing had ever happened between us because I think it would’ve been much worse for her, me being lost like that, if we were together.”
“Isn’t there a saying about it’s better to love and lose someone than never love at all?” Dal asked.
Chakotay’s face darkened. “Sometimes a saying has wisdom in it, and sometimes it’s just something people say. You don’t want people you care about to suffer.”
“She suffered just the same,” Dal continued, seemingly oblivious to the pointed look the captain was giving him. “You didn’t see her face when she briefed us on Voyager and showed us the last known security footage of you. She was ready to risk everything, even her Starfleet career, to get you back, and I don’t believe it’s just because you were her first officer. I don’t even believe it’s because you’re her friend.” He paused. “I felt it. Zero felt it, too, how much you mean to her. We all thought…” Dal trailed off, his eyes finally meeting Chakotay’s glare.
“You all thought?”
“Nothing,” Dal replied quickly. “Nothing at all.”
And that had been the end of the conversation. But it had remained in Chakotay’s mind, along with the glances, the touches, the moments that he and Kathryn had shared since his return. Yet every time he had thought their conversation might stray into something deeper or more personal, they’d been interrupted.
Perhaps it was for the best. He had aged ten years; she hadn’t. She deserved better, he thought. What he’d told Dal was true. They were just friends, nothing more, and that was the way it should be.
The soil was soft and cool under her gardening gloves as she gently planted a blue flower, caressing its leaves as she placed it firmly in the ground. Birds chirped overhead and Kathryn Janeway inhaled the clean, sweet Indiana air. The smells of the air and the dirt filled her with memories of her childhood, gardening with her mother and grandmother. She’d hated it at the time, but now, she found it strangely fulfilling.
The thought connected to a memory she’d long pushed to the back of her mind. “I find it very satisfying now, watching the seeds sprout and grow.” She’d said it years ago on a faraway Delta Quadrant planet, and the memory inevitably led her thoughts to Chakotay, now captaining the Voyager-A, off on a new adventure while she remained on Earth, planting flowers, cultivating her garden, and furnishing the big, old Indiana farmhouse that had been passed down to her after her mother’s death.
“You may not arrive at the coordinates you’ve set, but you’ll arrive where you belong.” They were her own words from a recent personal log that now echoed in her mind. “There are always new chapters ahead even when you think your story has finished.” She wondered, as she dug a hole for another blue flower, what her next chapter would be. She had thought many times that her next chapter might be deeply intertwined with Chakotay’s, but this had turned out to be yet another course she’d hoped to chart but never been able to pursue.
Her relationship with Chakotay had been complicated from the moment he had materialized on her bridge fourteen years earlier. In those days, she had been the one to lay down parameters while he had seemed more open to exploring something more between them. It had been a topic they had avoided discussing except when absolutely necessary, and by the time Voyager reentered the Alpha Quadrant, Chakotay had been dating Seven of Nine and the subject had seemed a moot point.
However, Chakotay’s relationship with Seven had lasted less than a year, and it hadn’t taken long for the two of them to return to the friendship they had begun years earlier. Yet in spite of numerous moments that their friendship seemed to teeter on the edge of moving into something deeper, it remained what it was. Chakotay was her best friend, and Kathryn was fairly certain that she was his, too. When the Protostar had been lost in the Delta Quadrant, there’d been no question in her mind that she had to find him.
The two year journey of searching for the missing Captain Chakotay had brought Kathryn a new appreciation of their relationship. She had replayed memories of their time together over and over again in her mind. “Think of it like a beacon to guide me home,” he’d told her at the Protostar’s launch, pressing the stone from his medicine bundle into her hand. She clung to the bits and pieces she had gleaned from his logs and messages like a starving person coveting a crumb of bread. “Tell Kathryn I’m sorry, but I’m doing this for you.” “I’ve thought about this moment for what feels like an eternity.”
The words were etched in her mind, but over time, she’d come to doubt their meaning. The original transmission he’d sent from Solum had been cut with static. Had he really meant he was doing it for her? Or had he merely meant he was doing it for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole? When he had held her in his arms in the transporter room, his feelings had seemed so clear. But after the fact, she could not help but wonder, had he meant he’d dreamed of seeing her, specifically? Or had he simply meant coming home in general? In the moment, she’d thought the statement was about her, but after she’d learned of his ten years of exile, her doubts had begun to grow.
Since his return, although they’d shared moments of friendship and closeness, they had so easily fallen into patterns formed over years of interactions. A casual hand on the shoulder or hand on his chest, intimate but not too intimate, a conversation that turned deep but not too deep, a remark in the midst of a tense situation that was personal, but not too personal. They’d had over a decade of practice at being close, but not that close, and it seemed that in spite of the life and death situations they’d emerged from, they had no trouble falling into the same patterns all over again.
She’d tried to test his feelings. “Now that we’ve got you back, that farm waiting in Indiana is starting to look better and better,” she’d said, hoping he might understand what she was really asking him. How does that sound to you, Chakotay? Life on a farm in Indiana? But he hadn’t understood the subtext, and merely asked if she was really considering early retirement before their conversation was interrupted by yet another crisis. She had wanted to broach the subject with him countless times, but it had never seemed like the right moment. Had his ten years of exile changed his feelings? Or had she misinterpreted them from the beginning?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the whir of an engine, and she was surprised to look up and see a shuttlecraft descending on her lawn. She was even more surprised when the object of her thoughts emerged from it. Was it possible that he had been thinking of her, too? She stood, shaking the excess dirt from her gardening gloves. “Wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“Starfleet Command’s been trying to reach you.”
She tried not to show her disappointment that his visit was business and not personal. “I told them I don’t want a promotion,” she replied, forcing her tone to sound lighthearted. “I’m retired.” She expected a wise crack from him in reply, or a snide remark, but instead, as she studied his face, she saw that something was terribly wrong. “Why? What is it?”
“Mars was attacked.”
“By who?”
“Our own synths went rogue against us. We don’t know why.”
She lowered her eyes, turning away from him, feeling a heavy weight settle in her gut. She knew at this moment that yet another plan she had made for herself had been foiled, and she was not surprised when Chakotay continued, “All reserve officers are being called back.”
Her eyes strayed into the distance, across the Indiana horizon that was so familiar and yet so new. A horizon that she knew in that moment would have to wait.
Chakotay continued, “The Federation…” He paused before continuing, “needs you, Kathryn.”
She was still looking away towards the horizon, and she had to force herself to turn back to face him, to face the reality. There would be no retirement, no new chapter. She had no choice but to return, to help Starfleet and to serve once again. The Federation needs you, Kathryn. “I see,” she said softly. She looked at Chakotay now, fully and completely, allowing the emotions she felt to play across her face, the hurt, the uncertainty, the doubt. She made a conscious decision not to school her features as she had so often done over the years. And he saw it. She knew he did, because his eyes widened as he looked at her, and she saw the flash of recognition on his features.
But he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he said, “See you at Headquarters,” and turned to walk back towards the shuttle.
“Chakotay…”
He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to face her.
A long moment of silence stretched out between them in which a million emotions filled her heart, a million possible phrases filled her mind, and none of them seemed like the right thing to say. All she knew was that she needed to stop him from walking away in that moment. He was still looking at her, standing on the spot where he had stopped, staring at her silently. “Say something,” she finally pleaded softly, her voice little more than a whisper.
The silence hung in the air like a thick cloud, until he finally spoke. “I don’t know what to say.”
She looked at him, trying to read his facial expression. She thought she could see doubt in his eyes, fear even, but her own doubts about her ability to read his emotions bubbled to the surface. She opened her mouth to reply, but could not find the words she needed. She thought she could see him struggling to find the right words, too, but then he seemed to give up.
“Starfleet Command expects you for a briefing at 1900 hours,” he finally said, turning to go back to the shuttle.
Kathryn was struck by a sudden flash of insight and the feeling that if she let him walk away from her in this moment, right now, that he might be walking out of her life forever. “Chakotay, wait!” It was a shout of desperation, and he stopped in his tracks, turning around to face her once again, his expression a mixture of hope and uncertainty. “I know there’s been an attack and that Starfleet needs us. I know there’s work to do and the work comes first, but after all that we’ve been through, after two years of searching for you, after all the sleepless nights lying awake thinking about you, wondering where you were, if you were still alive, I…” The outburst had come in a flurry of emotion, and she trailed off, wondering how to explain to him what she felt. He was looking at her with curiosity, confusion, and a hint of bemusement in his features, too.
She started again. “I spent two years thinking about what I would say to you if I ever saw you again. But then nothing happened the way I thought it would. It was one crisis after another, always an interruption, and any time I tried to say something, it came out wrong, or the conversation turned to another subject, and now…” She extended her gloved hand towards him, her voice catching in her throat. “You’re standing right in front of me, but I feel so far away from you, further away than I ever felt during those two years when you were lost in the Delta Quadrant.”
“What is it you wanted to say?” he asked softly.
She looked away, feeling her frustration mount. Was she truly being so unclear? Was he trying on purpose to make it difficult for her? “Maybe it’s not a good time,” she started.
But this time, he interrupted her. “It will never be a good time,” he said, “but we’re here right now, and I’m listening.”
She took a deep breath before continuing, “I wanted to talk about us. So many times. I tried to hint at it, but you never responded the way I had hoped.”
“Us?”
She studied him and decided that he wasn’t being purposefully obtuse. She saw doubt painted across his features, vulnerability, and decided to put her own fears aside and tell him the truth. “After you left on the Protostar, I thought that the stone, the mirror, the way we said goodbye, that it meant you were interested in pursuing something more than just friendship when you returned.”
“That was a long time ago for me.”
Her face fell. “Then you did feel that way, but your feelings have changed.”
He reached across the gap between them and placed his finger under her chin, raising her eyes to meet his. He shook his head. “It’s not that. I feel like I’m a man out of time,” he admitted, “out of place. If you feel distance between us, that’s why.” He paused. “It’s me. I’m sorry.”
She stepped closer to him, placing a gloved hand on his arm. “You have nothing to apologize for. What you’ve been through, I can’t even imagine. You seemed happy, content to be home, fulfilled by your new role as the captain of Voyager-A. I should have seen deeper. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
He shook his head again. “I am happy being the captain of Voyager. I’m grateful that Starfleet offered me the position. I thought after my exile, they might feel I was obsolete, but instead, they embraced me and offered me my job back with a wonderful ship and a great crew.” He paused, offering her a small smile. “Your crew.” She grinned back at him. “The captaincy is wonderful. It’s given me a sense of purpose and meaning in my life that I really need right now. But there’s still something missing. It’s like ever since I got back, there’s a gaping hole in my heart.”
“I feel the same way,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He gave her a wry chuckle and a lopsided grin. “I was waiting for you to say something.”
She sighed, removing her gardening gloves and tucking them under her arm so she could reach out and take his hand, interlacing her fingers with his. “You’re not obsolete, Chakotay,” she reassured him. “You never will be, at least not to me.”
He squeezed her hand. “Thanks.” He looked down at the ground and then back at her. “Ten years can make a man feel… well…” He searched for the right words as his cheeks colored with embarrassment. “I was already older than you, before I spent ten years on Ysida.”
She released his hand to raise her fingers to his face, brushing them down his cheek, then tracing the small lines that had formed near his eyes and on his forehead. “I was afraid I would never see you again, and now you’re here. I don’t care about your age or the extra ten years.” Her fingers followed the line of his jaw down to his shoulder and down his arm to his hand, where she interlaced her fingers with his again and gave his hand a tug. “Come inside with me. I have something of yours that I have to return.”
He followed her past the garden and down the walkway, enjoying the feeling of her hand resting in his. “I’ve been trying to puzzle it out,” he told her, “how it could be that now that I’m home, back with my friends and family, that I feel more empty than I did sometimes on Ysida.”
“On Ysida, your mission was clear,” she supplied softly. “You had to do what you did to protect everyone that you cared about and everything you love and believe in.”
“Yes,” he said, looking down at her with surprise. “That’s right.”
“When you have a mission like that, it takes precedence over everything else. There’s no time to feel the emptiness, even though it’s there. The mission is everything. It’s more than a mission. It’s a mandate, a calling.”
“Of course you understand,” he mused. “That’s how you felt about getting Voyager home.”
“Yes,” she said, letting go of his hand to put her gardening gloves in a bin on the front porch before opening the door for him. “And about finding you.”
“You really felt that way about finding me?” he asked as he followed her into the house.
“I did.”
He followed her past the entryway and the kitchen to a cozy room furnished in grays and browns with a large fireplace at one end. He could suddenly picture the two of them together in that room, curled up on the couch, a fire roaring in the fireplace. He was still standing at the entrance when she called his name, having crossed the room to a shelf on the far side. “Sorry,” he said. “I was lost in thought for a minute there.” He followed her over to the shelf where she had grasped an object. She turned and took his hand, turning it palm up and placing the stone in it before covering his hand with both of hers.
“This belongs to you,” she said. She removed her hands from his so that he could see the stone in his palm. “I wanted to give it back to you on the ship, but it never seemed like the right moment.”
He looked down at the stone and then back at Kathryn and shook his head, turning his hand over and enfolding it back into her palm. “No,” he said. “You should keep it. In the Delta Quadrant, knowing you had it made me feel close to you.”
She pressed the stone to her heart. “Having it made me feel close to you.”
“I thought about you all the time,” he said, clasping her hands, still holding the stone, between both of his. “In prison on Solum, in exile on Ysida, not a day went by that I didn’t imagine what it would be like to see you again, all the things I wanted to say to you.” Her eyes were bright as she looked up at him, giving him the courage to continue. “All the things I wanted to do to you.” She blushed in response and continued to look at him, encouraging him to go on. “The life that I wanted to make with you. On Solum, I held out hope, but once we marooned the ship on Ysida, I knew it would never happen. They were just dreams. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the life we could have had together. After Adreek was gone, sometimes I would sit by the fire at night and just fantasize about where we’d be, what we’d be doing.” He glanced at the fireplace. “Sitting by the fire, holding you in my arms as the snow fell outside. Or sailing together on the real Lake George. Or having a cup of morning coffee together at the Night Owl before we went to work.”
She placed the stone back on the shelf where she’d taken it from and reached up to brush the tears from his cheeks. “I thought about you, too. Every day. I wondered where you were, if you were all right, if you were alive. There were times I could have sworn I felt your presence, times when I felt you were thinking of me, too.”
He lowered his forehead to hers, his tears mingling with her own as his fingers sought hers and intertwined themselves together. “I was,” he whispered.
“I imagined our reunion countless times. I imagined meeting you in the transporter room and letting you hold me in your arms. I imagined having to go to some godforsaken Delta Quadrant planet to rescue you. I imagined having to remain by your bedside in sickbay until you awoke, holding my hand. I imagined making passionate love to you, and I imagined you here, in this house with me, building a life together.”
He nuzzled his cheek against hers, feeling the wetness on her face mirror his own, and then turned his head so his lips were against her cheek. He pressed a kiss against her soft flesh, tasting the salt of her tears, and then another, and then another. His lips made a slow trail towards her mouth, but before he kissed her lips, he pulled back to look into her eyes. Her eyes were shining, full of hope and wonder, and as he gazed into them, he felt his own pain and loneliness and doubt begin to melt away. She was looking at him expectantly, waiting. He closed his eyes, lowering his face towards her.
His comm badge beeped. “Starfleet Command to Captain Chakotay.”
With a throaty laugh, Kathryn’s forehead came to rest on his chest and he groaned as he straightened, tapping the comm badge to answer. “Chakotay here.”
“Have you been delayed, sir? Admiral Jellico is awaiting the admiral’s response.”
He looked down at Kathryn and she righted herself, nodding silently. “The admiral will be returning to Headquarters with me,” Chakotay said. “You may inform Admiral Jellico we’ll be departing immediately.”
“Yes, sir. Starfleet Command out.”
He looked at Kathryn ruefully, but instead of being upset, he saw that she was laughing. “And that,” she said pointedly, “is why we never get to say the things we want to say to each other.”
“Well,” he said, leaning down to place a quick, chaste kiss on her lips, “I think we should remedy that.”
“I agree, but right now, we’re both expected at Starfleet Command post haste. Do you have to return to Voyager tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he said, following her out of the house. “I’m awaiting orders. This attack, it sounded serious.”
Kathryn’s face clouded. “Then we better get back to HQ as fast as possible. Come on. I’ll replicate a new uniform on the shuttle.”
As Chakotay keyed in the liftoff sequence, Kathryn emerged from the back of the shuttle, already clad in uniform. “I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there,” he said.
“It’s far too close to home for comfort,” Kathryn agreed, pulling up the latest briefing available to the admiralty.
“Whatever happens,” Chakotay said, glancing back at her from the console, “we’ll face it together.”
He had made a statement, but she heard the question in his voice. “Yes,” she assured him. “We will.”
By the time Kathryn returned to the Indiana farmhouse that night, she felt exhausted and defeated. The synth attack was bad enough, but Starfleet’s response to it had left her feeling dejected and drained. Try as she might to object to Starfleet’s plans, her protests had fallen on deaf ears. She collapsed on the couch, her mind racing with all that had happened that day.
Her home’s security system beeped. “Incoming transporter request,” the computer said, “from Captain Chakotay.”
“Allow it,” she replied, suddenly feeling a sense of anticipation replace her exhaustion.
A moment later, Chakotay shimmered to life before her. He took one look at her and stepped forward, taking her in his arms. She allowed herself the respite, melting against him as her arms encircled his waist. “That bad, huh?” he asked.
She hugged him tight and then broke away. “They might as well be suspending the Starfleet charter. No missions of exploration? No missions of mercy? Ending the Romulan evacuation? This is going to have consequences for decades to come.”
“I agree.”
“What about Voyager?” she asked. “Have you received an assignment?”
“We’re to patrol the Sol System for the foreseeable future,” Chakotay said.
Kathryn breathed a sigh of relief. “At least you’ll be safe for now.”
Chakotay’s brow furrowed. “If anywhere is safe.”
“I know, I know. It’s the risks we take. I just feel like…”
“We only just found each other and now everything is in jeopardy?” he finished for her.
She nodded.
“That is the life we signed up for,” he said, stepping close again.
“I know.”
“I only have a few more hours before we have to leave orbit,” he continued, “but we won’t be far. I’ll be back every few days.”
“That’s good,” she said softly as he moved even closer. “I’m going to see what I can do about making sure the new Prodigy doesn’t get decommissioned for parts.”
“That’s good, too,” Chakotay said softly, his lips inching closer and closer to hers. “And now, I’m going to finish what we started earlier.”
And then his lips touched hers and she felt the electricity flow from his body through hers. She pressed herself against him, allowing his tongue past her lips as she explored his mouth. Her hands were gripping him, trying to touch every inch of him at once as their mouths moved together in a passionate kiss. His hands found her buttocks, pulling her tighter against him, and she felt his hardness press up against her belly. She couldn’t get close enough to him, and she began to pull at his uniform top. It was discarded on the floor as he backed her up into the couch and covered her body with his own.
Afterwards, still naked, he lit a fire in the fireplace and returned to the couch, where he spooned up against her and covered them both with a soft blanket. The gentle glow of the fire played upon her features as he leaned down and brushed a strand of hair from her face, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“There’s still one thing I didn’t say,” she whispered.
“Say it.”
She turned in his embrace to face him, pressed tight against his body on the sofa. He shifted one leg to cover hers, allowing her to snuggle closer. She looked up at him, the light from the fire dancing in his dark eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he replied, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “This is what I was missing.”
“The hole in your heart?” she asked, looking into his eyes.
“Gone,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her forehead again.
She nodded, pressing her cheek up against his bare skin. “I don’t feel empty anymore, either. I don’t feel like you’re far away.”
“No matter what, I’ll never be far away from you again, Kathryn,” he assured her, enfolding her within his body. His eyes flitted to where the stone lay on a nearby shelf. “It was a beacon to bring me home. That’s why I want you to keep it now. My home is with you.”
“And mine with you. No matter what.”
She snuggled against him and inhaled his masculine scent, knowing that whatever was to come, they would be together. The truth was, they had been all along; they’d just needed to find the courage to say it.