Final Frontier
Chapter 1
"I hope I'm doing the right thing by coming to you with this," Chakotay said as he settled into one of the elegant Le Corbusier chairs, wondering if it would really hold his weight. Kathryn's penthouse suite in the Presidio Starfleet officers' quarters had full-length windows overlooking the bay, with the low-slung chairs lined up at just the right angle to maximize the view. The attention to detail in every element of the décor was disorienting after so many years of familiar, worn shipboard interiors. It had only been a week, but he was starting to forget important things, things he wanted to remember, like the first flash of a new nebula on the view screen.
As the debriefings began to drag, it had recently occurred to him to wonder if he would ever see the inside of a Starfleet vessel again. Surely he was just being morbid. Nobody had suggested that field commissions would not be honored, or that the Maquis risked any sort of punishment. Yet they were all specimens under glass, that was clear. The questions were predictable and benign, but the silences that accumulated each day made him shift and stretch in his cushioned chair, trying to wake whatever body part had fallen asleep, trying to track the inquisitors' body language. The exhaustion every evening was like fighting off a coma, and because of it – and the issue he was coming to see her about – he'd had very little chance to talk with Kathryn. That weighed on him more than anything. He accepted the red wine she offered and held the delicate stem in both hands. "They sure pulled out all the stops for your quarters, didn't they?"
She hesitated as she lowered herself into the matching chair. "Aren't yours like this?" she asked, the concern immediate.
"Mine are fine," he assured her. "They're just not the presidential suite."
She frowned. "I should be keeping a better eye on what's happening with the crew. It's been debriefings all day and then every night some new dignitary to entertain. This is the first night since we disembarked that they haven't scheduled me for something."
"And here I am bringing you a problem," he said, offering her a repentant smile before tasting his wine. After so many replicated glasses, this real Earth wine, pounded out of grapes that had lived under a single, brilliant sun, tasted improbably fruity and exultant. He sipped again, reflecting on how easy it was to be present now that they were on Earth, how rich each moment was. "I'm sorry, Kathryn, we don't have to talk about it tonight. You need to rest."
"Ah, now that sounds like the old Chakotay," she said with a grin, lifting her own glass. "Oh, this is lovely. I'd forgotten how wine can taste like sunlight rather than replicating relays."
"It's like being newborn, isn't it?" Chakotay answered, examining the flesh on the back of his own right hand. "Everything I touch, taste, feel – it's brand new. I can't get over it. I'm not entirely convinced that it's real and not some kind of alien mind trick."
This made Kathryn laugh out loud. "If it's a trick, it's very good. They got all the cranky admirals just right. And at least I'm here with you, not some stranger I've been conditioned to like."
Quarra. The reference drew them both back into their own minds. Simultaneously they raised their glasses for longer sips of wine.
"A personnel issue, you say?" Kathryn began the original conversation again, relaxing into her chair to his right, stretching out her uniformed legs, the evening sky before them and the city lights blinking on below, descending to the bay. "Of course you did the right thing. They're still our crew, for a few more days anyway. Are they having a hard time with the debriefings?"
He shook his head. "Not most of them. They consider it a necessary step to getting on with their lives, and the partying carries on every night." He flashed her a quick grin and raised his glass to clink hers. She smiled in response and let her arm relax over the arm of the chair nearest him, but her face quickly settled back into seriousness.
"Then what is it?" she asked, examining his face for clues. He realized that she must think something was going wrong for him, maybe something in the debriefings, something about the Maquis or his service aboard Voyager. He felt a rush of adrenalin, that familiar eagerness to protect her, reassure her, but she wasn't completely wrong. This did involve him, in a way that might be uncomfortable.
He swallowed a good-sized mouthful of wine, took his empty glass in both hands, and sighed at the perfectly staged view before noticing an imperfection in the carpet where the seam was badly finished. There was nothing to do but say it. "It's Seven. I don't think I'm… qualified to deal with this on my own. I'd like your advice." He glanced over to see if any recognition registered. Perhaps Seven had already spoken to her. It would be natural.
But Kathryn sipped her wine without looking at him. Her shoulders fell a little. After Admiral Janeway's warning about Seven and Chakotay, she was a little afraid to hear what might come next, but she couldn't deny him her counsel and her friendship, no matter what was happening between him and Seven. "What's going on?" she asked, still without eye contact, minimizing her words, keeping her voice crisp and professional.
Chakotay settled the glass on the small black table before and between them. There was no way to sit up straight in the chair so he gave in to gravity and assumed the same lounging posture Kathryn had. "I think she's panicking, Kathryn. Nothing she remembers has prepared her for returning to Earth, and for some reason she's decided that I'm the one who should mediate everything for her." He paused to glance at Kathryn again, but she remained quiet and watchful, staring out over the city rather than answering his gaze, so he continued. "Every night when I get back from debriefings, she's there waiting. She used to like nothing better than to be left alone in Astrometrics, and now that she doesn't have that, she wants to talk every minute until it's time for her to regenerate. We debrief the debriefings. We review the Earth cultures database. She asks endless questions about human behavior." Chakotay let his chin slump toward his chest. "I'm exhausted, and I don't think all this is helping her. She's just getting more worked up about leaving here and having to interact with civilians."
"Have you suggested counseling sessions?" Kathryn asked in that disturbingly calm voice, still showing him only her profile. Her fingers played nervously around the stem of her wine glass, the only outward sign of tension. It was unlike her to be so detached. Her concern for the crew, and for Seven in particular, was one of her defining attributes. A seed of concern for Kathryn's well being made itself felt, somewhere in his chest. Surely the debriefings had been harder on her than anyone, with seven years of her command decisions under review. With Seven occupying his every spare moment, he'd had no time to go to Kathryn. It sounded as if Starfleet had been working her every waking moment. The thought angered him. He wanted to ask about her, but that wasn't what they were there to discuss.
"Of course I have. She refuses to go. She's convinced that Starfleet Medical will just want to dissect her, mentally or physically or both. They've got her using some special regeneration unit next door – she's not even assigned to real quarters. Maybe if you talked to her…" Chakotay suggested, leaning a little her way. "She trusts you. It might be good for both of you."
Kathryn smiled at her wine glass and tilted her head off to the right, away from him. Now Chakotay was sure that something was wrong. "She seems to trust you. She's not showing up at my door every night," Kathryn answered without any emphasis to her words.
Chakotay sighed and reached for the bottle Kathryn had left on the table. This was not going as he'd hoped. He had to put an end to Seven's dependency on him, in a way that wouldn't cause any more discomfort for her than necessary. He'd been counting on Kathryn's help, but in retrospect that seemed naïve. He knew that the crew were gossiping about him and Seven. What must she think? He needed to clarify the nature of the friendship for her. "She reminds me of my younger sister getting ready to leave for university, years ago. I was a newly commissioned officer, dead on my feet from work every night, and she'd call and want to have these endless conversations about what everything would be like. It's not a part of my life I'd hoped to relive." He was leaning toward Kathryn now, trying to draw her into the pose they'd held so often on the bridge, leaning together over the center command console. She was not playing along.
Kathryn crossed her legs away from him and set down her glass on the table a little harder than was strictly necessary. She gave him only a glance, no real eye contact. "I understand that it's difficult now, but if this is a relationship you want to pursue, it seems to me that you'll have to go through this phase with her. She needs you now."
Chakotay turned his head fully toward her at this. "A relationship I want to pursue? What makes you think this is a relationship?"
Kathryn's eyes flicked his way without resting on him, before returning to the view. "Isn't it? It's hard to keep secrets on a ship as small as Voyager, Chakotay." She seemed to change her mind about her glass, reached over and lifted it as if to drink, then hesitated and rested it on her knee. He noticed finally how controlled and closed her body language was: legs turned away from him, one hand fixed on the arm of the chair, the other stiffly posing her glass on her knee, chin up, eyes forward, not a hair out of place. She was giving a command performance in the guise of a friendly chat. His eyebrows came together in consternation.
"I don't know what you heard," he said, "but I've been giving her social lessons. The doctor asked me to help, several weeks ago. She started calling them dates so I did too, so that I wouldn't hurt her feelings. Trying not to hurt Seven's feelings, can you imagine!" He scoffed and leaned forward to refill her glass, trying to ease the charged atmosphere.
Kathryn held her pose and hesitated a long moment before speaking. "That's not exactly what I heard," she said, "but it doesn't matter. I'd be happy to help her find a more appropriate counselor. I'll see to it in the morning."
She was so perfectly composed that Chakotay began to feel nervous himself. He rotated his chair ninety degrees to face her more fully. He took her glass from her and set it beside his on the table.
"Thank you," he acknowledged her promise of assistance with his problem. That subject was over. "So, what exactly did you hear?"
Kathryn watched his rotation then leaned back into her chair with a dismissive wave of her left hand. "I told you, it's unimportant." She fixed her eyes on a tiny red light blinking on and off in the blackness down at the water's edge. "Of course, it's perfectly understandable that you'd want your freedom now that we're home. Everything has changed." Her voice was studied and every syllable perfectly enunciated, as if she'd rehearsed the words in her head. He had no memory of any situation where he felt as if she was acting out a role with him. Their interactions, even when angry, had always been so natural. This stilted performance from her unnerved him.
"Yes, everything has changed." He measured his words, looking for any reaction from her. Nothing. She was a sphinx. "But there's still only one person I'd want the freedom to go to." Chakotay was watching her, speaking in a voice so low that for a moment she wasn't sure what he'd said.
"Oh?" she said just as softly, holding her gaze on the distant light.
"Kathryn!" he exclaimed in frustration, reaching out and jerking the arm of her chair to swing her around to face him, knee to knee. The red wing of her hair swung against her cheek, her hands grabbed the chair arms, and her angry eyes came around finally to his. He thought he saw a nearly imperceptible quiver of her bottom lip. He had upset her. Good, at least it was emotion. But now he had Kathryn Janeway staring him down like a fierce caged animal. He sat back, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of pursuing this confrontation further.
"What do you want from me?" she hissed, gripping the steel frame of her chair. Her nostrils flared. She scared the hell out of him when she got like this, and he loved it. She was magnificent, Chakotay thought, and clamped down the desire to smile before it got him hurt. He inhaled deeply and brought his chin up as he exhaled.
"I don't want anything from you," he said in a clear voice, not missing the emotion that flashed across her face, emptying her features of anger and replacing it with something more hollow and vulnerable than he'd seen in years, before she mastered herself. That microexpression gave him courage. He held her eyes and spoke in the same confident voice, making sure she heard and understood this time. "I only want you to let me give you what I've wanted to give you all these years." At this, her eyes widened, so he leaned forward, placed his hands on hers where they still clutched the chair, and continued. "Let me love you, Kathryn. Give me a chance to give you the peace you've always given me. You deserve that. We both do."
Now there was emotion on her face for real. Her eyes dropped from his and she turned her head slightly to stare at a place on the floor, maybe that same bad seam that had distracted him. In the dim interior of the suite, he could see the city lights reflected in the tears gathering in her eyes. One escaped and traveled down her left cheek, just before her left hand escaped from under his and reached tentatively, blindly for him. He grabbed it and used the momentum to reel her in – hand, arm, torso, legs – onto his lap, wrapped up safely against him, her head tucked against his cheek. His heart under her hand was beating so fast that it startled her and she began to pat it in a soothing gesture.
"Shhh," she whispered, "it's okay. It's okay," not really sure what she was saying, but overwhelmed with the urge to comfort him after all they'd been through. A moment ago she'd been so angry, furious at him for bringing all this to her, forcing her to face whatever remained between them. Now, snug against him, the pulse of his anxiety and pain was all she could perceive. It broke her heart. She began to feel dampness on her temple. "No no, don't cry," she murmured, reaching up to wipe the tears. At her words and her tender gesture, he pulled her even closer, crushing her against him, choking out her name, at last letting out the emotion that had at times threatened to drown him from within.
"Chakotay!" she gulped, "Air!"
He loosened his grip and pulled his head back far enough to see her face. She had only seen him this way once, undone by emotion, stained by tears. That time, he thought she was dead. "Are you really here?" he asked in a strangled tone. "Is it really over, and we're alive, and together? Because I don't think I really believed this day would come."
She struggled a little to sit up better in his arms, at last showing him a genuine smile. She glanced down at their bodies, tangled in his chair. "Well, you certainly seem to have seized the day." The old, happy light she remembered rose in his eyes. His hand came up to her cheek and she leaned into the smooth plane of his palm as he smiled.
"I think I need some extra debriefing, Captain," he whispered, very close to her face. She couldn't help but chortle with laughter.
"Don't tell me you've been saving lines like that for 70,000 light years!" she exclaimed, kicking her heels as he started to laugh with her. "That's terrible! I may have to change my mind!"
He wrapped his arm back around her and lowered her to the arm of the chair. "Too late. I'm in command now."
She smirked up at him. "Oh, you think so?"
He tapped the end of her nose lightly with his, eyes black in the half light. "In our house, if nowhere else."
"Our house?" she repeated. He nodded with such certainty in his eyes that her breath hitched. "I like the sound of that," she said. He had no sooner laid his lips on hers, registered their shape and warmth with a rush of immense satisfaction, than the door chimed. Kathryn twisted away. "If you're here, where's Seven?" she whispered, and they both turned to look at the door.