Authors Notes: Set onboard the cruiser containing caesium that Kate and Dutchy were tasked to sail back to port. Did anyone else wonder what would have happended if Kate stayed to talk to Dutchy instead of walking off? Well I did, so I started writing this story here...

This chapter is a bit long, but I didn't want to take anything out or split it in two. I hope you enjoy...All feedback welcome.

Chapter One – Dutchy and Kate

"You know I get the impression that the boss gave us this steaming party to keep me off the ship." Kate said, looking intently at Dutchy. She had seen him having a word with Mike earlier in the day and ever since they had come back on board she had felt the increased tension between her and Mike.

"Yeah, I may have let the cat out of the bag about..."

"Why on earth would you do that?" Kate looked shocked at Dutchy but it confirmed her suspicions. She knew that Mike, now knowing about the proposal, was going to ask questions. Questions she wasn't ready for. She had barely had time to process it herself, and she knew Mike would make it more confusing.

"He's out commanding officer Kate, he deserved a heads up. And also, because I know you had feelings for each other"

Thinking about her reply, Kate sighed deeply: "His career is really important to him, and I pulled the pin because I didn't want to get in the way of that. I don't think it's fair to force him to make a choice." Not wanting to entertain the conversation about her love life any further, Kate turned around moving towards the door and walking off the bridge.

"So you chose for him." Dutchy replied somewhat angrily.

Kate charged back into the bridge, oblivious to the fact that he was baiting her into the conversation. "Yeah, I chose for him, but he didn't exactly complain, so just stay out if it next time OK?" Kate stated more than asked as she turned to head back down to the lower decks. This was not a conversation she wanted to have at all, least of all with Dutchy.

"Really?" Dutchy called out retrieving Kate's attention and stopping her from leaving again, "Because I remember him trying to talk to you and you brushing him off." Dutchy said a little more aggressively than he meant to while Kate looked at him slightly confused. "Not long after your promotion didn't come though, he was trying to talk to you, remember? Something about dinner or a drink and you fobbed him off." Dutchy said in a slightly calmer tone as Kate realised what he was talking about.

"Dutchy...I couldn't..It wouldn't have helped. I couldn't tell him why, I mean...It's complicated." Kate stumbled out in response taking her seat back next to Dutchy.

"Yeah, well, I kind of figured that it was complicated," Dutchy chuckled trying to lighten the mood, "and now you have this other bloke proposing to you. Look, I can see you are trying to figure all this out on your own, but right now there is nothing but you, me, some caesium and the ocean. We've got a couple of hours before where back in port, so if you want to talk, you've got a captive audience." Dutchy offered, half curious to find out the truth, half just wanting to help.

"Why, because you are such an expert on relationships?" Kate asked with a deadly serious tone. Dutchy shrugged. He decided to let it go and go back to staring at the ocean when he looked over at Kate one last time and saw the wry smile on her face.

"That genuinely hurts X." Dutchy said feigning being hurt before they both chucked. "OK, it's a fair point, and the caesium would probably give better advice, but it would also give you radiation burns and God knows what else. I'm here if you want to talk, that's all." Dutchy leant back in his chair, half facing the ocean, half facing Kate. If she wasn't going to talk he didn't want to force her. He had tried, and besides, talking to his XO about her and his CO's forbidden love life wasn't exactly in his comfort zone.

Kate sat for a minute thinking. She knew that talking to another crew member about this was a bad idea, but she needed to talk to someone, and Dutchy was the only one who had actually bothered, or had the guts to ask her. He was also the only one that she knew of that knew about her and Mike. As Kate weighed up the pros and cons of this conversation she started fidgeting. She took her cap off her DPNU's, fiddled with the back of it for a while before re-attaching it to her uniform. Leaving her cap alone, she took off her head set to rest around her neck, before reaching for the cap again when she realized she needed to talk to someone about it all. She had to bite the bullet.

"If we are going to have this conversation there are going to be some ground rules." Kate said seriously turning to Dutchy, "Firstly, if any of this gets out, there will be serious repercussions. And I'm not talking Navy approved discipline actions, I mean serious repercussions. If you don't believe me, you can ask 2Dads what his punishment was for rumour mongering."

"Yes Ma'am," Dutchy said with a certain amount of cockiness to his voice.

"Secondly, if we are going to talk about my love life we can drop the formality. No Ma'am or X, let's just stick with Kate and see how we go."

"Fair enough." Dutchy said and then waited for Kate to start talking. He saw her take a few deep breaths in and each time it looked like she was about to say something she stopped, as if she had lost the ability to talk. "You know, I hear the beginning is a pretty good place to start." Dutchy offered by way of encouragement which only made Kate start laughing.

"Dutchy, if I'm going to start at the beginning, we're going to need to take a longer route back." Kate said looking to Dutchy who was both amused and confused by her reaction. Kate regained her composure before nervously speaking again. "Do you or any of the crew know that the Boss, I mean, Mike and I knew each other before I was posted to Hammersley?" She asked glancing sideways at Dutchy to gauge his response.

"You're kidding? How long have you two known each other?" Dutchy asked surprised at the way the conversation was starting out.

"About ten years now." Kate admitted while Dutchy tried not to fall off his chair.

"You're kidding right? You two have been going on like this for ten years?" Dutchy asked completely stunned.

"Well sort of." Kate offered before managing to look at Dutchy and she realised he needed an explanation. "Back then we were, well, it was short-lived but intense and not entirely by the rules." Kate explained. She knew she didn't have to give him all the details, he was cluey enough to fill in the blanks. "And he left. He had just been given his first command, and he left. He just up and left, without a word."

"Hammersley?" Dutchy asked as Kate nodded.

"I didn't hear a thing from him for five years, then I was given my orders to serve as his XO. By the time I found out whose ship I was on it was too late to do anything about it so I just had to suck it up." Kate said pausing before continuing. "We both got pretty good at pretending nothing was going on, I think we may have even convinced ourselves at some point, but then we reached a point where we couldn't really pretend anymore." Kate suddenly felt shy, uncomfortable and unsure of how to continue, so she fell silent.

As the silence dragged on Dutchy realised he was going to have to coax the rest of the story out of her, "Well, what happened?" he encouraged her, "You can't leave it there."

"He ran into a burning building to save me. Well, burning scaffolding anyway, but it was well and truly on fire, there were explosions of fuel everywhere and he ran into the fire to save me. When I came to, all I could see was him. Sort of hard to pretend that you don't have feelings for each other after something like that happens." Kate said looking at Dutchy a little sheepishly. She wasn't exactly embarrassed, if anything if was a relief to get it off her chest, but she couldn't help feeling like a bit of a school-girl. Here she was, 36 years old, an Lieutenant and Executive Officer in the RAN, and she was talking to her Bosun about her romantic woes.

"Nothing happened while he was on the ship, we just couldn't hide from our feelings, or each other anymore. Then, actually I think it was just after you joined us, he got his promotion and the shore posting and..." Kate said taking a deep cleansing breath allowing Dutchy to take in everything he had just heard.

"But that was only for a couple of weeks, and we were out at sea the whole time." Dutchy said trying to remember back to when he first joined Hammersley.

"Not the whole time..." Kate said staring determinedly out to the ocean, "We were in port for one night." She added very quietly refusing to look at Dutchy. Talking about feelings was one thing, talking about the night she slept with their now CO was something that didn't require eye contact.

Dutchy only needed a few seconds to figure out what that meant and part of him couldn't help but be slightly amused at the predicament she was in back then. "Ahhhh...You must have been spinning out when he came back as the CO." He said with a bit of a chuckle which seemed to lighten the mood.

"Yeah, that's one way to put it." Kate said with her own chuckle before continuing. "We went into this sort of ridiculous relationship-in-waiting type of thing, it was only supposed to be for a couple of weeks until a new CO was found. But then a few weeks turned into a few months and he wasn't exactly disappointed in being back on Hammersley, so I spelt it out for him. I told him exactly what I wanted and that I was fed up with waiting." Kate said looking at Dutchy before continuing, "But nothing changed and he was still our CO on our next patrol."

"I'm guessing it's about then that you were applying to transfer off the ship?" Dutchy asked remembering how Kate was that night in the bar, unhappy and angry.

"Yeah, about then. I'd had enough and I gave up. I couldn't go on anymore. There were too many mixed messages from him. In the end, I made a snap judgment of him based on a misunderstanding that resulted in me dropping his calls and him ending up in the hands of Cavanaugh." Shaking her head and remembering those terrible 24 hours she continued. "Cavanaugh, Gorski, and, well, you know the rest." Kate trailed off, again wondering why she was telling all of this to Dutchy.

"Actually Ma'am...sorry, Kate, no I don't. How do you go from Cavanaugh, Gorski and breaking the rules to the ginger-ninja and a relationship that is apparently so serious he is proposing?" Dutchy asked confused. Knowing the back story helped him to understand some of what had happened last year, but he had no idea how things had turned south so quickly.

"Ginger-ninja? Seriously, that's what you're going to call him?" Kate asked raising an eye-brow in Dutchy's direction.

"Sorry, been storing that one up for a while. I promise, no more shots at him. He seems like a decent enough bloke, I just don't understand what happened." Dutchy said still trying to get to the heart of what was going on.

"After Gorski, we started talking about us and what we really wanted. We even planned a holiday," Kate paused and looked back to Dutchy, "Yes, Tahiti." She confirmed as Dutchy nodded in response. Kate was over the awkwardness of the conversation now and turned away from the ocean to face Dutchy as she spoke. "We were just waiting for my promotion to come through. I'd take command of Hammersley and he would be back at Navcom. But then the promotion didn't come through and Fleet Command ordered that he stay on as CO for another 12 months." Kate sighed before continuing. "Difference was this time, he wasn't happy to be staying on. He went directly to fleet command threatened to resign if he did not get his shore posting back."

Dutchy had been resting back in his chair, but hearing this he sprang forward in shock. "He threatened to resign? Talk about a bold move, he loves the Navy." Was all Dutchy could manage. He was beginning to realise how deep their connection really was – they were both dedicated to the Navy, so to break the rules, even if it only was once, was a big deal. But for Mike to threaten to resign, this was much deeper than he imagined, and for it to have been going on for ten years? Dutchy just couldn't imagine what they had both been through.

"I know, and that's what she reminded me. What if he left and it didn't work out? Or what if he kept pushing and fleet command looked into why he wanted the transfer so badly? It wouldn't be that hard for them to figure it out, and while it may not look great for me and I'd probably be a Lieutenant forever, they would kick him out. You know what the part that really sucks is? Apart from Gorski's boat, we technically didn't break the rules once." Almost unable to control her tears that had started forming she turned around and looked out to sea, not wanting Dutchy to see her pain.

At first Dutchy wasn't sure how to respond. As he processed every word that Kate had just spoken he realized something else needed explaining. "Wait, who is she?" He asked. As he did, Kate dropped her head to her hands and for the first time refused to answer. "She?" Dutchy repeated trying to think of all possible options, but could only think of one. "Commander White? Did she pull you up over this? How did that even work, she pulled the two of you aside at Navcom to have a heart to heart about your love lives?"

"It wasn't the two of us." Kate whispered, head still in her hands.

Dutchy took a moment again to consider what she was saying. "She pulled you up on your own? So I'm guessing it wasn't a heart to heart as much as a threat. The boss must have hit the roof..." Dutchy was about to continue as Kate cut him off.

"He doesn't know, and he's not going to." Kate said looking Dutchy in the eye, "The two of them have enough issues to sort through, they don't need another one."

"Ryan." Dutchy said slumping back in his chair. "They have a son together, which means that they once...and now you and he, he was prepared to quit, she threatened you, so you ended it." Dutchy began to rub his forehead as he closed his eyes, "This is doing my head in."

"How do you think I feel?" Kate said offering a slight smirk to try and lighten the mood. "Now do you see the appeal of the ginger-ninja? There are no rules about us being together, he doesn't make me guess how he feels, he makes me laugh, he makes a killer chocolate mousse, and we want the same things."

"And what things are they?" Dutchy asked intrigued to see where this was leading.

"Don't laugh," Kate warned trying to give Dutchy her best XO look. Dutchy adopted a serious face and urged her to continue, "I want a family." Kate admitted, "Marriage, kids, a home with a white picket fence, maybe even a pet. I want the whole deal. He wants the same things, and he wants them with me."

"Firstly that's nothing to laugh at. Even I've thought about having a family someday. Secondly, how do you know the boss doesn't want the same things?" Dutchy was well past the point of wondering if it was a good idea to have this conversation. It was definitely a bad idea, but they were past the point of no return now.

"Because when I asked him he said he'd never really thought about kids." Kate shrugged as she continued, "And now he has Ryan, I just don't know what to think."

"I get that you want a family, but do you love Jim? You are talking marriage and kids, that is a big commitment and you haven't been together that long, are you really ready to say forever?" Dutchy asked wondering just how deep her feelings for Jim really were. He found it difficult to understand how she could so quickly move from Mike to Jim. It just didn't make sense to him.

Kate took some time before she answered. This was the million dollar question – did she love Jim? If she did, all the history and baggage with Mike just didn't matter, she would have her prince charming and the life she wanted. She knew Dutchy was waiting for an answer, she just wasn't sure what to say. Not quite ready to answer, Kate stalled for time, "You know this isn't the first time Jim and I have been together? We were in a relationship a couple of years ago as well."

Dutchy knew she was stalling but played along anyway. "Yeah, Swaino sort of filled me in on that."

"Oh god, please tell me this hasn't be a topic of conversation for the crew?" Kate asked, mortified at some of the things that may have been said.

"No," Dutchy said laughing, "nothing like that. It was only Swain, Charge and Me. When we picked him up after the bombing you all seemed to know him and I just asked what the connection was. Swain filled me in on the Samaru operation, and that you and Jim had been seeing each other. That doesn't really answer my question though, do you love him?" Dutchy prodded again, he wasn't going to let her get off that easily.

After pausing for a few more moments to contemplate her answer, Kate finally spoke. It wasn't a whisper, but it was very quiet. "I love the way I feel when I am with him, and yes, part of me definitely loves him."

"You don't have to answer this, but is it enough to marry him? Because if you are having doubts now, before you've even said yes, then I think that's telling you something." Dutchy offered as advice. He sensed that Kate was struggling with the decision and didn't want to push her, but the one thing he knew about love is that when it hits you, you are supposed to know it. He remembered seeing Mike and Kate on Gorski's boat and realised that is what love is supposed to look like; like there is no-one else in the world, and no doubts in your mind.

As they sailed into the harbour Kate was no clearer in her mind about what she was going to say to Jim, but she was feeling a little better after talking about it all "Thanks Dutchy."

"Anytime. And you don't need to worry, even if I was to tell anyone about this, no-one would believe we actually had this conversation, so your secrets are safe with me." Dutchy said with a smile. Even he couldn't believe he had this conversation with his normally closed off X, "The caesium on the other hand, I can't guarantee it won't talk."

To Be Continued