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Four months after he appeared on her transport platform, Chakotay disappeared again.
Well, not disappeared exactly. But he did come to Kathryn’s office on a Tuesday afternoon and announce that he wasn’t going to take the teaching job at the Academy that he’d been offered – at least, not straight away. And he kissed her goodbye, promised to be back, and then just left.
She hadn’t heard from him in almost four weeks, save for a quick call around two weeks in, where he’d been dressed in one of his thick, checked shirts and looked tired – but inordinately pleased with himself too. He assured he was fine, promised to call again soon, and hung up.
She was trying not to panic about it. Whatever their relationship was, however they both might go about defining it, she knew that it was too early to have any jealous demands on his time, just as he’d never presume to have any on hers. They were both independent people, and had been for a long time.
The thing she kept reminding herself was that, however much the galaxy tried to split them up, it never seemed to be able to keep them apart.
That was very reassuring.
“You have an urgent message from Admiral Alee,” Tauri said, putting Kathryn’s coffee down on the desk. “And your mother called. She said I had to get you to call her back immediately.”
“Thank you,” Kathryn said, wrapping her hands around the mug. “I think my mother might have to wait her turn, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, Admiral,” Tauri grinned. “I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to make that call.”
“Lucky you that she’s my problem then.”
Tauri chuckled, and left the office. Gretchen Janeway actually had a lot of time for Kathryn’s young assistant, much more accepting of his apologies when Kathryn was tied up than the ones that Kathryn offered herself. She had contemplated just having Tauri answer all her calls, even the ones to her personal code, just to head off her mother’s wrath.
Kathryn called Admiral Alee first, of course. It wasn’t urgent, or at least not the sort of urgent that might have her comming a fellow admiral at five o’clock in the morning to leave a message with their assistant. But then no other admirals had been where Kathryn Janeway had been. The Delta Quadrant experience did tend to skew her perspective as to what constituted an emergency and what didn’t.
It was part of the reason she wasn’t losing her mind over Chakotay’s radio silence – that’s what she was telling herself anyway. They’d been through worse, not only on Voyager but with the Protostar after that, and she was a grown up, with rational thought and perception. He’d turn up again soon. He’d promised.
She was totally fine with it.
Yes, sir.
To distract herself from thoughts of kicking his ass the moment he got back, she commed her mother. Gretchen knew what time Kathryn tended to get to the office, and she couldn’t leave it much longer or else poor Tauri would be getting another scolding.
Gretchen answered immediately.
“There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d crashed a shuttle and Tauri was afraid to tell me.”
“Good morning to you too, Mom,” Kathryn said, and sipped her coffee. On the screen, her mother did exactly the same thing, but her eyes never left the vid screen, like she was trying to stare Kathryn out. Or at least try and get a read on something that Kathryn didn’t yet know was an issue.
“I need you to come home for dinner tonight,” Gretchen said, without any preamble. Honestly, put her on negotiating committees and Kathryn was sure they’d have persuaded half the reluctant planets in the galaxy to join the Federation before the year was out.
“What if I’m busy?”
“You’re not. Tauri shares your calendar with me.”
Kathryn’s eyebrows shot up, and her mother smirked.
“Not anything important, don’t panic. Your Starfleet secrets are safe.”
Kathryn made a note to have a word with her assistant later. For her mother, she pasted on a smile and shrugged.
“Well, you’ve got me. What time shall I come over?”
“I’ll send the car to pick you up from the station at seven. Don’t be late.”
“Yes, ma’am. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
The screen went blank, and Kathryn leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples. It was too early for a headache, but then again, speaking with her mother was always interesting. There was surely a reason that a dinner demand had come out of the blue, but Gretchen Janeway always played her cards close to her chest, and Kathryn had never been great at catching her mother’s tells. She’d never know the reason until Gretchen wanted her to know it.
And so all she could do was settle in for a day of work that would have to end promptly at eighteen hundred hours, lest she be late for dinner.
She hauled Tauri into her office for a little bit of a lecture about giving her mother so much free information, and told him that he at least had to make Gretchen work for it a little bit. Tauri just grinned, nodded, apologised, and then left the office with the air of someone who hadn’t just been dressed down by his commanding officer. Kathryn was a little perturbed that her own personal assistant was more afraid of her mother than he was of her, but then Gretchen Janeway had always had a way of getting exactly what she wanted.
Which is why Kathryn, her grown up daughter, a literal admiral in Starfleet, scurried from her office at eighteen hundred hours exactly to make sure she arrived home in time for dinner.
It would have been embarrassing if Kathryn didn’t love her mom so much.
Just as Gretchen promised, the car was there waiting for Kathryn when she left the transport station in Bloomington. It was a twenty-minute drive to the farm, and she spent the time laying across the back seat, watching the stars through the glass roof of the car. Stargazing in San Francisco just wasn’t the same as rural Indiana, where the stars seemed so bright she could reach out and touch them. It was these same stars, in this same little, tiny patch of sky, that had always felt like home.
She hadn’t felt like she was home for a long time, after Voyager got back to Earth. Between endless meetings and debriefings and hearings, none of it had felt real. Like reaching home had been such an impossible dream that there was no way it had come true.
Chakotay had been her rock then, as he had been for the seven years previous. The one who always had time to listen, always time to lend a shoulder to lean on – even as his service was being questioned, his Maquis past dragged back into the light, he still had time for his captain. Kathryn had brought him here, to Indiana, as soon as they could share an evening together. They’d laid under the same stars, side by side, never touching – as always – and looked up at Kathryn’s little patch of sky.
“Do you ever feel like it’s all just a dream?” Kathryn asked. “Maybe we died out there, and this is what comes after.”
“Maybe we did,” Chakotay said, his voice light and teasing. “Or maybe my captain is just feeling a little homesick for Voyager.”
“This is home, Chakotay. Not that ship. No matter how much I might miss her.”
“Home is where you feel safe,” he said. “Somehow, Voyager became that for us all. There’s no shame in the memory of loving her so much.”
The car came to a stop in front of the farmhouse. There was no sign of her mother. Kathryn pulled her coat tight around herself and hurried indoors. If there was one thing that she had never missed, it was Indiana fall weather. She’d been built for warmer climates, of that she was sure.
The door was unlocked and she scooted inside, hanging her coat and kicking off her boots. There’d been no time to change, and she hoped her mother wouldn’t have any jibes about bringing work home, when she had been the one to insist that Kathryn hurry over so quickly.
There were voices in the kitchen, and she stopped dead. Her mother’s voice was loud, clear as a bell. But there was a deeper, quiet rumbling in conversation with her. Who could Gretchen have invited to dinner? Was that the reason she was so insistent on the time? Kathryn sighed.
“Mom, if there’s going to be a surprise – Chakotay?”
Kathryn’s heart leapt. There he was, sitting at the counter with a glass of water in his hand, elbows on the marble, feet up on the stool like he belonged there.
“Kathryn,” he said, his voice warm, his smile even warmer. “I’ve missed you.”
She gaped. She couldn’t help it. Lost for goddamn words, because what the hell was he doing here, in her mother’s kitchen, like he hadn’t been missing for the past month?
“Close your mouth, honey, you look like a sea bass,” Gretchen said, hardly even bothering to turn away from her pot on the stove.
Kathryn couldn’t think of a smart reply before Chakotay was off his stool and standing in front of her. He had the good grace to look a little bit bashful, but definitely not sorry enough.
Kathryn found she could speak after all.
“Where the hell have you been?” she asked, gripping his elbows. “Why are you here?”
“I was working on something,” he said. “And now I can show it to you.”
“They are not good enough answers to my questions,” she said, but didn’t let go of him. In fact, completely out of her control, her arms had decided to pull him closer. Close enough that if she wanted to, she could stand on her toes and kiss him. Which part of her did want to do, to be fair. But the other part wanted to knock him on his ass. It was a battle, to be sure.
“Kiss the man or put him down,” Gretchen said, waving her wooden spoon in their direction. “Go and sit on the couch, you’re annoying me already.”
Gretchen was obviously a conspirator here, and Kathryn wouldn’t be forgetting it. But rather than face a wooden spoon across the knuckles – just one more indignity – Kathryn stalked through to the family room and threw herself onto the couch, as ordered. Chakotay followed, a grin on his face that did not help in soothing the part of her that wanted to knock him down a peg or two.
“Speak. Now.”
He stood as though reporting to her, as though her Ready Room desk was between them, and he’d come to deliver his daily report. His hands clasped behind his back. She’d always wondered if he did that to stop himself from reaching out, to remind himself that he couldn’t touch. She’d certainly always appreciated having the desk between them, a physical reminder of the things that she couldn’t have.
“I’m sorry that I just disappeared,” he said. “But I needed some time. To think.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But did you have to be out of communication the whole time?”
He opened his mouth and she held up a finger.
“Calling into the office once in a month is still being out of communication range,” she clarified.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But if it makes you feel better, I did my thinking. And I feel much better for it.”
“What did you discover?” she asked, because of course she was interested. She was mad as hell at him – and potentially at her mother, depending on her involvement here – but she’d always care about his wellbeing. It had always been hard on him, the homecoming. No denying that the Maquis had suffered more than their fair share of Starfleet’s scrutiny, and none more so than him. And then what he’d been through after, stranding the Protostar, losing his crew, being alone for so long – it was a wonder that he’d kept hold of his sanity and sense of self at all.
“I discovered that I can’t be without you,” he said mildly. “I need you, with me. Always.”
He could have been talking about the weather, for all the matter-of-factness that he put into the statement.
She opened her mouth and found that she had nothing to say. She’d always hoped, of course, that one day they might be together. She’d hoped that their fledgling relationship, a few kisses traded in the shadows of Starfleet HQ, a dinner or two at her apartment, would lead to something.
Maybe.
But this. This was a declaration.
“Kathryn?”
She swallowed hard.
“Kathryn?”
He had moved, sometime, to her side. He was crouched at her side, one hand resting on her knee.
“Chakotay,” she breathed. “Did you have to do this when my mother is in the next room?”
His face broke into a broad grin, the one that she had always coveted on Voyager. The one that screwed up his face, wrinkled his eyes. The one that made him glow.
“I had to ask her permission,” he said.
“For what?”
“To marry you, of course.”
There was nothing to be done. She had to kiss him. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him towards her, unbalancing him, dragging him half onto her lap. He laughed, full of joy, and she kissed him, hard. Her other hand slid around his neck, held him in place. Not that he was going anywhere. His mouth was hot and eager, and she’d probably have stripped him of his shirt right there and then if Gretchen hadn’t poked her head into the room.
“When you’re done in there, dinner is ready. I can’t keep it warm for long or the sauce will split.”
Kathryn broke away, chuckling. Chakotay pressed his forehead to hers, and their breaths mingled as she tried to remember if she was mad at him or not. Right then, it didn’t seem very important.
“After dinner, I have a surprise for you,” he whispered.
“You mean beyond the marriage proposal?”
“I’m not sure I actually asked you yet. Can you wait another hour or so?”
**
The farm wasn’t that big, as far as farms went, but there was enough space behind the house, in the woods to hide something that needed to be hidden.
Chakotay led Kathryn towards the trees, her hand in his. She felt as though she was floating. The two glasses of wine she’d had with dinner had definitely contributed to that, but so did the touch of Chakotay’s hand, and the thought that this was hers now. She could touch him whenever she wanted to and know that the feeling was returned.
“Close your eyes,” he said, his voice clear in the still of the night. “Trust me.”
“Always.”
They walked further into the trees until finally coming to a stop. She couldn’t help a tiny shiver that went straight through her as Chakotay stepped to her side and put his arm around her shoulders. He smelled delicious, his body warm and solid. Whatever the surprise was, she somehow doubted that it could be better –
“Open your eyes.”
She did.
And she gasped, like a character in a Regency holo-novel. There was no other reaction worthy of the sight.
“What do you think?”
It was a log cabin. It was the log cabin, the one that he had promised her all the way back on New Earth, when the thought of the rest of their lives together hadn’t seemed so impossible. The one time during their voyage that Kathryn had been ready to drop all of her shields and let him in. She’d been prepared for that life, only to have it snatched away.
And now, so, so many years later, he’d built her that cabin.
“Kathryn?”
“It’s – beautiful.”
“Do you remember?”
“I remember,” she said, catching his hands in hers. A swell of emotion filled her, crashed like a wave through her body from top to toe, and she felt tears gather in her eyes. He went blurry, but she could see the intensity of the moment on his face too, the shine of his eyes in the darkness.
“Will you marry me, Kathryn?” he asked, dropping to his knee in front of her.
“Do I get to spend my weekends here?” she smiled, cupping his face in her hands.
“Yes.”
“Then yes. I’ll marry you.”
There was no mistaking his sob as she stepped forwards and held him against her, his head level with her chest. Her own tears flowed, but she laughed, and felt him laughing too.
“I’d have married you without the log cabin,” she said, as he got to his feet, kissing her hands.
“It sweetened the deal though, don’t you think?”
“Flawless strategizing as always. Are you going to give me the tour?”
“Sure.” His eyes were burning. “Shall we start with the master bedroom?”
“Captain Chakotay, you’re reading my mind.”